


When I Got Older, I Thought This Would End

by ellbie



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Headcanon - Missy came after Dhawan!Master, Initially just Ten/Simm., M/M, Post-Episode: s04e17-e18 The End of Time, The Doctor Regenerates (Doctor Who), The Master Regenerates (Doctor Who), There will be some regenerations and the others will show up in later chapters., Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-20
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:06:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 27,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23745025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellbie/pseuds/ellbie
Summary: Having narrowly avoided being sucked through the portal back to Gallifrey after saving the Doctor from Rassilon, the Master begins traveling with the Doctor aboard the TARDIS. In their latest adventure, the Master has to get Martha and the Doctor back to the ship before the asteroid they're trapped on is destroyed by a mystery adversary.A post-End of Time AU that seeks to explain Simm!Master and the 12th Doctor's interaction in The Doctor Falls while exploring my personal favorite headcanon: Missy came after Dhawan!Master.
Relationships: Tenth Doctor/The Master (Simm), The Doctor | Theta Sigma/The Master | Koschei (Doctor Who: Academy Era), The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 39





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **A note about the warnings before you read** : The Doctor's and the Master's regenerations will in the very least be implied. I don't know how much detail I'll go into in the later chapters, so I'm intentionally using "Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings" as the warning, but I'm calling out the regenerations in the tags now just in case. If that's not your cup of tea because it's too close to "Major Character Death" (or if you just don't like when the Doctor regenerates), feel free to dip out now. No hard feelings :) 
> 
> Normally I write a full first draft before I start posting because it lets me give y'all a final chapter count and I get new chapters up sooner. This time, however, I'm not doing that. We're going into our 6th week of COVID-19 quarantine and interacting in the comments on AO3 is too good of a mental escape to pass up, so I decided to just start posting early. The story is entirely outlined and I don't anticipate deviating from the current plan. Just be aware that only the first couple chapters are written, so my update cadence might be all over the place.
> 
> This will primarily focus on Ten/Simm and then Simm!Master until we get closer to the end. Additional characters and relationship tags will be added as more people show up in the story.
> 
> If you had any qualms about this being a feel-good story like my Ten/Simm one-shots, don't worry: it won't be. Title is a lyric from "Imaginary Friend" by ABSRDIST, in case you wanted any more convincing.

They’d been sailing along on the conveyor belt for several minutes. At first, it followed the bright hallways, making several turns which the Master tried to memorize as they snaked deeper into the compound, but eventually, it carried them through a dark tunnel with a ceiling that barely cleared their heads. By the time they got to the intake room, they had no clue where they were in relation to the facility entrance. The Master tugged experimentally against the restraints on his wrists, but he sensed no weak points in the magnetic field that held the metal cuffs in place. 

By his current estimate, they had roughly thirty minutes before the massive satellite orbiting them exploded, killing everyone on the asteroid.

“So,” a voice said, “you’re the three that tried to hijack Surveil-1.” A man stepped into view, flanked by two guards. He swiped a bright curl of orange hair out of his face and smirked at the prisoners. “This is going to be fun.”

The Master eyed the man with an expressionless face. He seemed young compared to the other two, and the look in his eyes made it clear he was eager to prove his mettle. It must not have been too long ago that he was promoted to this position, and his enthusiasm for the opportunity didn’t give the Master any comfort. He also didn’t particularly like the flash of silver he spied on the man’s head when he pushed that lock of hair behind his ear. He stole a look at the guards, noticing the circlettes more clearly standing out against their short cropped hair, wrapping delicately around their temples. 

_Impression shields,_ he thought, reaching out telepathically to check. His assumption was confirmed when he met the artificial mental barriers surrounding their minds. Even he wouldn’t be able to break through them from a distance. He looked down at the restraints once more, considering, then decided it was best to just let their captor clown about until he made an inevitable misstep.

He looked to his left, where Martha and the Doctor stood restrained next to him on their own sections of the transport belt and sent them a warning look to keep their heads down.

Of course, that’s when the Doctor had to open his mouth.

“You don’t want to do this,” he said, trying to raise his hands but meeting the resistance of the magnetized cuffs. “We weren’t trying to hijack anything. We found it like that when we picked up the distress signal…”

The orange-haired man cut him off with a wave of his hand. “While I’m very curious about the list of excuses you must have prepared, unfortunately we need to do things by the book.” One of the guards stepped away from the group and held his hand over a bio scanner built into the wall. A seam appeared, noiselessly expanding outward until an entryway was revealed. A MediBot rolled through, coming to a stop in front of the Doctor and activating its scanner. The beam of light spread out a narrow plane and washed harmlessly over the Doctor’s face, but the Master felt himself tense.

_Keep your mouth shut, you moron. Let me handle this_ , he projected to the Doctor, only to find the man’s mental walls were also blocking him out. He bit off a frustrated growl.

_“Match found. Formulating,”_ the robotic voice reported.

The man eyed the readout on the MediBot’s display and smiled as a panel on the top of the robot opened.

_“Dispensing.”_ The robot _ding_ ed and a syringe of clear liquid popped out of the opening.

“Wait, wait, wait,” the Doctor stammered. “What is that?”

“This is Phase One, prisoner,” he said with a malicious grin as he snapped on a rubber glove. “Bring him forward.”

The two guards approached the conveyor and gripped the Doctor’s elbows before disabling the magnetic field binding his cuffs in place. The Doctor tried to plant his feet as he was manhandled forward.

“If you’d just let me explain… wait, no! That could kill me!” 

The man was holding the syringe in his gloved hand, casually flicking at the side to dislodge any air bubbles. “Unlikely it’ll kill you. Every species that comes through is catalogued along with their reactions to the therapy formulations. The MediBot already had an entry on whatever you are, so you’re not in for any surprises.” He depressed the plunger slightly, testing the way the liquid burbled out in a thick gel. “Less interesting from my end, but there you go. Once Phase One is complete, you’ll be assigned your quarters where you can wait for Phase Two.” 

The Master clenched and unclenched his fist as he watched the Doctor struggle against the guards while the leader approached him. One grabbed a fistfull of the Doctor’s hair and forced his head back. 

“J-just think for a second! What is Phase One? What’s that meant to do? If you tell me what’s in it, I can tell you how it’ll affect me—”

He gasped as his head was wrenched back further and stilled when the syringe made it to his peripheral vision.

“Hush, now,” the man said with a saccharine smile. “You’re just going to feel a pinch.”

The Doctor’s fingers grasped anxiously at empty air as the needle slid into his neck and the chemical was pumped into him. When he was finished, the man pulled the needle out and deposited the glove and empty syringe into a receptacle on the side of the MediBot.

“See? Not so bad. Alright, put him back on the belt, and let’s get started on the second prisoner.”

“No!” the Doctor shouted, and he began to struggle again

As the MediBot began scanning Martha, the other two guards struggled to restrain the Doctor. Martha flinched away when the beam passed over her eyes.

“ _Zero matches found. Calculating best formulation.”_

“Oh! We haven’t gotten an unknown species in a while!” the man said, clapping his hands. “Looks like I’m getting a commission.” He looked at Martha’s horrified face and his mouth curled up in a smile. “Don’t worry, it’s using its best guess based on known species in the database. The side effects _should_ be minimal.”

“Don’t touch her! If this is an interrogation, you’ve already got me! You don’t need to do this!” 

Then the Master saw it: that little flicker of cruel excitement igniting in the man’s eyes. He’d been hoping for a fight, and now the Doctor was giving it to him. The Master focused and tried again to telepathically warn the Doctor to stop struggling, but as soon as he attempted the connection, he was swept over by a wave of fear rolling off the Doctor’s mind. He winced, unprepared for the rush of emotion.

“Please, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

The other guards stopped trying to push the Doctor back toward the conveyor, instead holding him in place so their boss could approach him. He leaned in and smirked when the Doctor stilled under his gaze. “I know you will. In fact, all three of you are going to tell me everything you know. But Phase Two won’t commence until tomorrow. So in the meantime, you can save your breath.”

“But—”

Martha and the Master sucked in a collective breath when the fist landed, and the Master was sure the hit would’ve floored the Doctor had the other guards not been gripping him by the arms. The Doctor slumped, rolling his bruised jaw and blinking in confusion as the man shook his hand out, smiling pleasantly all the while. 

It wasn’t until the Master lost feeling in his hands that he realized he’d lunged forward against the restraints causing the cuffs to bite into his wrists. He let his breath out slowly through his nose and eased back.

“I told you to save your breath,” the man said, ignoring the outbursts. “You two, put him back on the belt.”

The Doctor seemed more docile as they dragged him backwards and re-enabled the magnetic restraint on his cuffs, blinking and shaking his head as if trying to focus his eyes. Unsure if it was lingering shock from being sucker punched, or if the mystery chemical was beginning to have some effect, the Master reached out telepathically again and was shocked at how easily he was able to access the Doctor’s mind. The serum must’ve been taking hold, slowly eroding away at his mental shields. The Master had a feeling he knew how this interrogation was going to go, and he decided they weren’t playing by the Doctor’s rules anymore.

The MediBot _ding_ ed and a new syringe, this time with a pale yellow liquid, was dispensed from the top.

“Doctor..?” Martha said nervously, as the three guards approached her next. She tried to pull her arms free, but they remained stuck at her sides.

“You’re just going to feel a pinch,” the leader smirked as he snapped a fresh glove on his hand and picked up the syringe, tapping the side with his finger.

“What is that?” she cried. “And what did you do to the Doctor?”

“Bring her forward,” he said, and the other two moved to take Martha by the arms.

“Seems a waste,” the Master said, raising his voice so he was heard over Martha’s struggling. He shot her another warning look when she whipped around to stare at him, eyes wide with fear. “Although I can’t imagine your interrogation techniques are particularly renowned if you need to administer psychic dampeners on a _human_.”

“Don’t worry,” the man said, keeping his eyes trained on the syringe as he tested the plunger. “Your turn is coming up soon enough.”

“Oh, I don’t think so. Listen, I know you probably haven’t been doing this job for very long…” 

The man’s eyes flicked angrily over to the Master and his hand holding the syringe lowered ever so slightly. 

The Master grinned and continued, “So I know you’re not really to blame for this whole mix up.” Despite the restraints, he fanned his fingers out and tossed a casual glance down as his nails before returning a conspiratorial gaze to the man. “Tell you what, you let us go now, and I promise to put in a good word with your boss about your _stellar_ performance.”

The two guards were standing in front of Martha, but eyed each other nervously and didn’t move to demagnetize the restraint field.

“Quiet, prisoner,” the leader snapped. “And you two! I said to bring her over here.”

_Don’t say anything_.

The Master projected the message directly into her head and although she grimaced at the unwelcome shout in her mind, she kept quiet.

“ _Or,_ ” the Master said, louder this time, “you could _not_ be an idiot, and release us. And might I recommend working on your intimidating voice? Maybe try practicing in the mirror before your next go, because you’re not fooling anyone.”

The man’s glare darkened, and the Master shot him an obnoxiously charming smile. A tray on the side of the MediBot flipped open, and the man set the syringe down. 

“You lot really know how to run your mouths, don’t you?”

“Seems we’re in good company to do it,” the Master said, inclining his head in a small bow. 

The man stood up a bit straighter and took a steadying breath to compose himself. “Right, let’s take care of your first then, shall we? I’m afraid you’re giving me quite a headache.”

The two guards waited for the MediBot to stop scanning the Master before grabbing his arms and disabling the magnetic restraints. They hauled him forward as the robot hummed.

_“Match found. Formulating.”_

“Well, now I know who the third wheel is,” the man said, winking at Martha as an identical syringe with the same clear gel that they’d given the Doctor slid out of the robot. The guard plucked it up, eyeing it with menacing precision, before smiling at the Master again. “What? Got nothing to say now?”

The Master chuckled. “No, I just needed a way to get through those pretty little trinkets on your heads. Physical contact is usually the easiest way.”

With twin gasps, the guards gripping the Master’s arms collapsed to the floor, unconscious. The Time Lord twisted his neck from side to side, letting out a pleased hum at the vertebrae popping before he fixed the leader with a wicked grin. “I’d say you’re only going to feel a quick pinch, but we both know that I’d be lying.”

The man was midway through turning to run down the hall when the Master plowed into him, tackling him to the floor. With one knee pinning his arm and the other knee pressed painfully into the space between his shoulders, he placed his hand on the floor next to the man’s head for balance and used his other to fist into his collar and yank his head back. 

The man sputtered and gagged, his free hand scrabbling wildly against the floor, unable to get any leverage. “Pl-ple…. Can’t… c-can’t breathe,” he gasped, the whites of his eyes flashing as he struggled.

The Master gave his collar another jerk to silence him. “I would stop struggling, if I were you.” He reached back to pull the syringe from the man’s pinned hand, then leaned forward to dangle it in front of his face. The man froze, then opened his mouth slowly to try to speak, and the Master lowered him the rest of the way to the floor so he could catch a breath. 

“Please, n-no! I’ll do anything!”

“Tell me how to get back to Surveil-1.” the Master asked, dropping the syringe in his pocket.

“I can tell you the way, but the doors can only be unlocked by the bio scanners. Only facility employees have access. You need me alive if you want to get out!”

The Master smiled. “Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?” He lifted his knee off the man’s back, anticipating his immediate attempt to push himself up. Using the momentum, he grabbed the man’s shoulder and slammed him down on his back. The impact knocked the wind out of him, but before he had time to catch his breath, the Master pressed his knee onto his chest. 

“You know,” the Time Lord said, pinning the man’s arms over his head with one hand. “I don’t think I caught your name.”

The man looked up into the Master’s face, eyes scanning wildly back and forth, sweat dotting his temples. “Vocks,” he choked. “M’name’s Vocks.”

“Nice to meet you, Vocks,” the Master said. He reached down to grip the circlette that peaked out of his fiery hair, and as he pulled it off, Vocks gasped and started struggling again. He took in a deep breath through his nose, revelling in the newly unguarded emotions rolling off of the man. “I’m the Master,” he said as he tossed the device to the side so it skittered across the floor. “And you will obey me.”


	2. Chapter 2

Vocks’s eyes dimmed and his entire body slumped under the Master’s weight as the telepathic suggestion took root in his brain. Satisfied, the Time Lord pushed himself up and clapped his hands together.

“Well, I think I’ve had my fill of this little adventure. Vocks, be a dear and get them off the transport belt.”

As if he were moving through a dream, the man slowly rose from the floor and demagnetized the fields that held the Doctor and Martha’s cuffs in place over the conveyor while the Master gathered the personal effects that had been confiscated when they were admitted to the facility. It took him a moment of fishing through the cluttered pockets of the Doctor’s coat before his hand curled around the sonic screwdriver. He tossed Martha her vortex manipulator (unfortunately useless after the guards ripped it open in a ham-fisted attempt to figure out what it was) and whirred the sonic over the bands on both of their wrists, watching the cuffs drop harmlessly to the floor.

As soon as she was released, she ran to the Doctor’s side. “Doctor? Doctor, can you hear me?” She laid her hands on the side of his face, using her thumbs to pull his lids down so she could check his pupils. 

He remained slumped forward, slack-jawed with eyes glazed from the affects of the serum. He blinked at Martha, not quite able to focus on her.

“Toss me the sonic, I’ll get his cuffs off.”

“His stay on.”

She kept her hands on the Doctor’s cheeks, only whipping her head around like an owl to pin him with a warning glare.

“Oh relax,” he said, gripping his newly freed wrist over the bruising and opening and closing his hand to encourage circulation. “I’m not leaving him here, but there’s no way he’ll pass for anything but a prisoner if he's behaving like this.” 

The Doctor had started murmuring something to himself, but they couldn’t make out what it was. Ignoring him for the moment, he turned back to Vocks and pointed at the unconscious guards on the floor.

“Get their jackets off.” He rubbed his hands together. “Oh, I do love a good disguise.”

“But what did they give the Doctor? Is he going to be OK?” Martha’s palms had moved from his face down to his restrained hands, squeezing lightly and getting little reaction.

The Master sighed. They really didn’t have time for this right now… right? 

Or did they? 

Surveil-1’s self-destruct wouldn’t activate for another twenty minutes at least… or was it ten? The Master didn’t feel quite sure. Something was affecting his temporal sense, but when he tried to focus on the vague, distracting feeling, hoping to bring it into sharper focus, it fuzzied and drifted away, just out of reach. Even the drums felt muffled and out of sync, like they were beating against an echo, the reverberating buzz dampening the usually clear signal.

“How long have we been here?”

“How the hell should I know? It felt like we were on that conveyor in the dark for ages. You’re the Time Lord, you tell me.”

Something in the facility must be causing the interference. He wondered if the Doctor could feel it too. 

Oh, right: the Doctor.

He gave his head a little shake, pulled the syringe out of his pocket and sniffed the end of the needle. Then he pumped a drop of the liquid on his thumb, licking at it tentatively. He furrowed his brow and spit. 

“Oxinomylphylate,” he muttered as he rushed over to the Doctor, shoving Martha out of the way. “Plus a cocktail of about thirty other extrasensory interference drugs.” He grabbed the other Time Lord’s chin and turned his head, exposing his neck. He eyed the drop of blood that had already scabbed over the needlestick. “We need to get him back to the TARDIS.”

Vocks stood at attention, holding the two uniform jackets out to Martha and the Master. Martha eyed him suspiciously.

“OK, I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but what did you do to _him?”_

“Hypnosis,” the Master said flatly as he pulled on one of the jackets, rolling his shoulders to stretch out the tight fit.

“And the Doctor just… lets you do that to people?”

The Master rolled his eyes, snatched the other uniform, and shoved it into Martha’s arms. “The Doctor doesn’t _let_ me do anything. I’m not one of his little pets, chasing him around and following all of his arbitrary rules.”

Martha raised an eyebrow, and the Master did his best to stop his lip from curling into a challenging sneer. As if to illustrate his point, he bent down to grab the laser guns from the unconscious guard’s holsters, tucking one into his waistband.

“We can all discuss the dubious morality of my impressive telepathic skills over dinner.” — _Wouldn’t be the first time,_ he thought glumly _— “_ But first, I’d like to get the Doctor back to the ship before he turns into a vegetable, stranding us on a satellite that’s scheduled to self-destruct.” He offered the butt of the other gun to Martha. 

She hesitated for a moment, then shrugged the other guard’s jacket on and took the weapon from the Master. Then they each grabbed one of the Doctor’s arms at the elbow, guiding him forward to step off the conveyor. 

“Alright, Vocks. Take us to the satellite access teleport.” 

They made it through the first few sets of doors with no issues. There weren’t many other guards about, and the facility itself seemed to be relatively unpopulated. There were several passageways that were completely empty, allowing them to jog part of the way, with the Master grabbing the Doctor around the waist to hurry him along and to keep him from tripping. For a moment, he thought they’d be back on the TARDIS in no time. Then the Doctor’s murmuring got louder.

“Koschei?” he slurred, head lolling toward the Master. 

They’d slowed to a walk to pass a group of guards, and Martha, holding his other elbow, gently pulled him back upright. “Quiet, Doctor,” she whispered, patting his hand to get his attention. “We’re almost there.”

The Master gritted his teeth and yanked the man’s other arm forward to keep him moving, but the Doctor’s cloudy eyes stayed trained on him. “Where’s Koschei?”

“What’s he saying?” Martha hissed out of the side of her mouth, keeping her eyes on the next door that parted in the wall. “Who’s Koschei?”

The Master increased their pace, following Vocks through the doorway. “One of the Doctor’s old friends from the Academy. Now shut it.”

The Doctor managed to pull his arm free from Martha’s grip and reached out to touch the Master’s face. “Kosch?”

The Master slapped his hand away. “ _Focus_ , Doctor.”

“The Academy on Gallifrey?” Martha whispered. “But that means—”

“Shush. It’s the chemicals. Just keep him quiet.”

The Master looked around, relieved that the hallways were beginning to look familiar. They were nearing the entrance of the facility. Next, they’d have to double back through a side corridor until they found the room that housed the satellite controls and the access teleport. 

The surveillance satellites that orbited the asteroid were all controlled remotely from computers in the facility on the ground. Surveil-1, the largest in the fleet, was the only one that had some systems set up for manual control from within the satellite itself. In fact, they had to land directly in one of the satellite’s small, unoccupied rooms, since the TARDIS had railed against the Doctor's wish to land directly on the asteroid, wailing and juddering as he struggled to get her to materialize, until he’d finally caved in and touched her down in Surveil-1's antechamber instead. If that wasn’t the first indication that this venture was doomed, the Doctor had just finished explaining to Martha that they couldn’t disable the self-destruct sequence from within the satellite when the doors to the antechamber flew open and armed guards burst in. They took one look at the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver aimed at the delicate circuitry of the computer’s status indicators before shoving charged laser guns in their faces.

They were quickly apprehended — despite the Doctor shouting himself hoarse trying to explain about the distress signal they’d picked up and how they were only trying to help — and were teleported from Surveil-1 down to the facility to begin their intake.

The Master let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding when they found the teleport active and the room vacant. But he knew they’d meet resistance as soon as they returned to the satellite. The employees of this facility would have no hope of physically moving the Doctor’s ship, so it was likely still in the antechamber right next to the teleport and likely heavily guarded while they tried to figure out what to do with the strange blue box.

As soon as the Doctor was in a fit mental state to feel badly about it, the Master planned on complaining about the man’s inability to get his damn ship to land closer to the source of the action.

“Wait,” the Doctor slurred. “We can’t leave yet.”

The Master didn’t respond, instead forcing the Doctor onto the teleport platform next to Martha. 

“I’m going to tell Vocks to send us back to the satellite. The receiving platform was right next to the TARDIS, and it’s probably still full of guards wearing impression shields. Make sure your weapon is charged.”

Martha shot the Doctor a nervous sideways glance before nodding and gripping the laser tighter. “What do we do once we’re on the TARDIS? The satellite is still going to explode with us on it.”

The Master reached back into the Doctor’s coat and pulled out the TARDIS key. “Just worry about getting on board. I’ll take care of the rest.” He turned to the hypnotized man in the corner of the room. “Vocks, activate the teleport.”

Fortunately, the quick spatial jump was nothing compared to the use of a vortex manipulator (or the Doctor’s shoddy piloting skills), and they were able to quickly shake off the disorientation of having beamed straight through the asteroid’s weak atmosphere and into the satellite in orbit miles above the surface.

“About time you got back. Did you bring the other plasma torch? We still haven’t been able to melt the lock.” The owner of the voice turned away from where she’d been aiming a blowtorch at the TARDIS keyhole and flipped up her protective visor. “Wait a minute… who are you?”

The Master wasted no time vaulting forward. The woman startled backwards, and the Master followed her movement, tripping her up so he could slam her into the wall. He drew his weapon, pressing the barrel up under her chin, while Martha hauled the protesting Doctor toward the ship.

“Throw me the key!” she shouted, and the Master used his free hand to toss it back to her.

“What’s going on in there?” a voice shouted from the main section of the satellite, muffled through the sealed door, and the Master held his finger over his lips, catching the woman’s nervous eyes as he let the laser gun whir threateningly against her throat.

“Got it!” Martha called as she pushed the doors open. “Come on, let’s go!”

“No!” the Doctor cried out, his voice suddenly clear. “I promised I’d go back!”

The Master turned to shout at him to get on the ship, when the woman threw her fist into the side of the his arm, forcing the gun to glance to the side as his grip faltered. He snarled when her elbow smashed into his face before she ducked away from him, slapping her hand against the bio scanner on the wall.

The door separating the antechamber from the rest of the satellite slid open, and the rest of the guards spilled into the room, guns drawn. 

The Master swore and plowed into the Doctor’s chest, throwing him and Martha roughly inside the TARDIS and kicking the door shut behind him just as the weapons discharged.

“No! I can’t leave him!” The Doctor started struggling against Martha’s hold again as he tried to force his way around the Master. “Koschei!” 

The impact of the Master’s hand striking the Doctor across the face rang loudly enough through the air that it surprised the Master himself, but despite the stinging red mark on his cheek, he didn’t seem to register the attack. His eyes were shifting and blinking, wild and unfocused like he couldn’t see who was actually standing around him.

“ _Doctor!”_ the Master shouted. “Get control of yourself and pilot your damn ship before the satellite kills everyone!” 

The Doctor stared blankly ahead, and the Master raised his hand again. 

“Master, _stop!_ ” Martha shouted, grabbing his arm and forcing it down.

He roared and shoved her away. “We don’t have time for this!” 

The banging on the other side of the TARDIS door was now accompanied by a litany of shouting voices as more guards were alerted.

The Master fisted his hands in the Doctor’s suit and dragged him to the console. Then he grabbed the Doctor’s wrist, pressing the man’s palm flat against a glowing panel, covering it with his own hand to hold it in place, while placing his other hand on the Doctor’s temple. He closed his eyes. Around them, the telepathic circuits began to whine and the planel glowed brighter, the orange light flickering around the Time Lords' overlapped fingers.

There was a brief pause before the Doctor sighed, his entire body seeming to relax. “There you are,” he whispered. “You’re safe.”

Then he started screaming. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it for my prewritten chapters. Updates will slow down after this.

“What did you do to him?” 

Her voice was impressively steady, and she punctuated the question with a click as she set her weapon to charge. But when the Master honed in on Martha’s eyes, visible just beyond the laser gun she had trained on him, he saw obvious fear swirling through them, betraying any actual intent behind the threat.

His shoulders heaved as he tried to slow his breathing, and his eyes flicked down to where the other man had crumpled on the floor. The stream of blood pouring out of the Doctor’s nose had slowed to a steady drip of dark, tacky globs that began to congeal where they landed on the cool metal grates. He noted the trail of darkening blood spatter that had ruined the front of his shirt and jacket, and despite hating that ridiculous pinstripe suit, the Master winced at how poorly the Doctor had endured the attack on his chemically addled mind. But he’d been pressed for time, and instead of finesse, the Master had chosen to demonstrate brutal efficiency.

He’d only been vaguely aware of the Doctor’s screaming, all his other senses having been muffled the moment he breached the shattered remains of the Doctor’s mental shields, plunging into the mottled wash of disjointed sensations. He forked like a lightning bolt to the far corners of the Doctor’s thoughts, scrabbling for any remaining thread of psychic connection the man still maintained with the TARDIS. He worked quickly, testing each damaged telepathic tendril until he felt a spark of acknowledgement from the ship. It was weak, but he rammed himself through. The Doctor reacted as if he’d grabbed a handful of exposed nerves, stripped raw by the chemicals tearing through his brain, and the Master sensed each synapse erupting with pain as the Doctor thrashed, attempting to recoil from the connection. The Master dug in, his mind clamping like a vice to hold the only remaining bridge between the Doctor and the TARDIS open, roaring at him to stop fighting while he started wrenching apart the isomorphic locks the Doctor had telepathically constructed around the controls. He felt, rather than heard, the cloister bells booming through their bodies as the ship, confused and incensed, tried to buck the Doctor’s frail mind as she fought against the Master’s intrusion. But he managed to hold fast, and, having rendered the controls accessible, dragged his way out of the Doctor’s mind, letting the man collapse like a bloodied rag doll before throwing all his attention into engaging the time rotor as the ship wailed through her dematerialization.

And now they were safe, the TARDIS engines having quieted to a peaceful hum as she idled through the time vortex.

“I bought us time,” the Master said, taking a final leaden breath to still his panting. “While we’re in the vortex, the Doctor can rest. Then we can pop back to right after we left and disable the satellite.”

“He can _rest?_ ” Martha asked incredulously. “Is he even _breathing?”_ She shifted her weight, as if debating taking a step forward before thinking better of it and squaring her shoulders, weapon still aimed. “You said earlier he was going to be a vegetable. _”_

“I was exaggerating so you’d hurry it up. He’ll be fine,” The Master looked down at the Doctor again and nudged him with the toe of his shoe. He frowned when the Doctor whimpered. “Or at least, he should be. He’s never been a strong telepath, but this is a tad dramatic. Even for him.” 

He crouched down and pressed his fingertips to the side of the Doctor’s head. The man whined through gritted teeth and curled in on himself as the Master pushed into his mind, gentler this time. The Doctor’s mindscape was cloudy and dull, with the sediment of a thousand thoughts billowing around chaotically, stirred up from the Master’s earlier presence. He waded through mess, until something sharp and defined floated past, catching his attention, so he reached out, careful not to push it further away...

He exhaled sharply and snatched his hand back, glaring down at the whimpering man curled up on the floor beneath him.

“What is it?” Martha asked. She’d lowered the gun completely now, apparently satisfied that the Master wasn’t planning on killing the Doctor.

He was silent for a moment while he regarded his old friend’s face. He reached his hand down again, this time brushing his thumb over the Doctor’s lips to wipe away the blood that had trailed over them.

“Perhaps I overestimated him.” He stepped behind him to better wrap his arms around the Doctor’s chest and haul him up. Leaning back, he quickly dipped down to scoop one arm under the Doctor’s knees, then straightened, stumbling one step backwards as he heaved the Doctor’s weight across his arms in an awkward cradle before he steadied himself. “Let’s get him to the medical bay.”

* * *

Martha had been sitting at the Doctor’s side since they’d gotten him cleaned up, despite the Master telling her repeatedly that there was nothing to be done except to let him sleep it off. She’d initially protested the sedative, unwilling to condemn her only buffer between herself and the Master to another several hours of unconsciousness. A screen over the medical bed displayed the Doctor’s vitals, and when the Master turned it toward her with a smirk and asked what she’d suggest instead, she stared blankly at the Gallifreyan scrolling past and resigned herself to at least remain close, petting his hand and whispering to him whenever his brow furrowed and his limbs twitched as the drugs wore off.

Not wanting her anxiety to spike to levels any more annoying than they currently were, the Master had retreated to the corner where he leaned against a vacant bed, chewing his thumbnail and reading over the list of chemicals the analyzer reported were currently working their way out of the Doctor’s system. 

“Who was Koschei?” 

He’d been distracted enough by his reading that he responded without thinking. “One of the Doctor’s old schoolmates.” He studied her for a moment. “I already told you that.”

“Well,” Martha said with a patronizing huff, “maybe there’s something important about this person I should know about if the Doctor suddenly started shouting that name.”

“He was confused,” the Master snapped, and Martha flinched away with a disgusted look, her hand curling protectively over the Doctor’s. “On top of breaking down his mental barriers and turning his thoughts into soup, those chemicals started blocking his ability to make telepathic connections. He was almost cut off from the TARDIS completely.” He chewed his thumb again, ruminating. “Must’ve made him delirious.”

Martha frowned and turned back to the Doctor, but it did little to hide her thoughts which buoyed toward the Master on waves of frustration and mistrust.

“The Doctor will just tell you the same thing when you ask him, if he doesn’t change the subject immediately. You know he likes to play the mysterious hero.”

“Get out of my head,” she snapped. “You can’t just _do_ that. It’s not proper.”

The Master rolled his eyes. “Would you like to make a list of things I do that offend you? It might spare us these embarrassing little tiffs.”

Martha pinned him with a glare. “It’s not just me. I can’t imagine the Doctor would be too thrilled over your behavior.”

He leaned forward, baring his teeth as his voice lowered to a dangerous growl. “Watch your tone, _human_.”

“Or what?” Martha snapped. “You can’t honestly think I’m going to let him wake up and carry on about his day without telling him you threatened someone with a gun, used mind control on someone else and… and” — she sputtered, trying to find the right words — “and you hotwired his TARDIS!”

The absurdity of the last accusation was enough to make the Time Lord throw his head back and laugh. “Be my guest! Tell him all about how I got us safely back to the ship with enough time to spare to still save everyone on that godforsaken rock, without hurting a single person. You’re welcome, by the way.”

“But what you did to Vocks—”

“Pleaaase,” he said, cutting her off with a dismissive wave. “It’s _hypnotism_ , not one of those nasty little mind wipes the Doctor likes to use when he outgrows his companions.” He tipped his head and smirked at her. “Not that I can’t do those as well.”

Martha’s whole body turned in her seat to face him, jaw set and eyes burning. She didn’t let go of the Doctor’s hand. “Are you threatening me?”

He folded his arms and pouted in mock sympathy. “Let me put it this way: you’re stuck on a stolen ship with the two most dangerous renegades in the universe. Be happy that the one of us that actually cares enough to hurt you is asleep.” 

The Doctor made a noise at the back of his throat, and Martha and the Master paused to watch him, momentarily distracted by his fidgeting.

“If you’re just going to sit here and fret over him, at least give me your vortex manipulator. I’ll go repair it.”

Martha instinctively grabbed for the device strapped to her wrist.

The Master let his head flop back with an exaggerated groan. “If I wanted to run off somewhere, why would I use that awful thing when I could just take the TARDIS?”

“That doesn’t exactly inspire trust.”

His eyes gleamed. “Good.” He approached her, hand stretched out expectantly.

She sighed and unbuckled the strap, depositing the cuff in the Master’s hand. He turned it over, eyeing it from all sides, and grimaced at the damaged wiring that poked out of the cracked cover.

“Tell him to come find me when he wakes up.”

With that, he turned on his heel and glided out of the room.

* * *

When the Doctor joined him in the console room hours later, his hands were resting on the panel, arms spread. His eyes scanned a readout on the display directly in front of him.

“I see you managed to pilot us into the vortex.”

The Master didn’t turn around. “If we’d waited for you to recover, the satellite would’ve exploded.” 

The Doctor sidled up next to him, pretending to look at the text flying past on the monitor, but the Master saw his eyes flick down to where his hands rested near the controls, the newly repaired vortex manipulator sitting neatly between them.

The Master remained still. “I suppose you’ll be reenabling the isomorphic locks now.”

He felt the Doctor’s hand slide around his waist. 

“You think I should?”

The Master sighed and let his head drop before he shot the Doctor a look over his shoulder, eyebrow raised. “Does it matter what I think?”

The Doctor frowned. “‘Course it does.” He burrowed his face into the Master’s neck and mumbled something into his skin.

The Master flinched away from the sensation with an annoyed grunt. “Come again?”

The Doctor lifted his head, instead letting his chin rest on the Master’s shoulder. “I said, ‘Thank you for saving me _._ ’”

The Master scoffed. “Don’t know if I’d call it that.”

“Then I guess I revoke my gratitude.”

The Master couldn’t help but smirk. “Pity. Watching you swallow your ego and admit you’re helpless without me is the only thing that makes these little outings worth it.”

The Doctor chuckled and turned his attention back to the display. “What are you looking at, anyway?”

“I have a hunch about what that facility is up to…” He trailed off as soon as the Doctor nipped at his ear. “Oh, _really_ , Doctor? Why bother asking if you’re not going to listen to the answer.”

He felt the Doctor’s nose press into his hair as he purred into his ear. “Martha’s asleep.”

“And you have a satellite self-destruct sequence to override.”

The Doctor pressed kisses down the line of his jaw, then tilted his head so his lips brushed the Master’s ear again. “Good thing the count down pauses as soon as we enter the time vortex.” He kissed the Master’s neck. “Very clever, by the way.”

The Master flexed his fingers over the cool metal of the control panel, then pushed himself up. The Doctor moved his arm from around his waist so he could take his hands and tug him toward the hallway.

“Besides, I’m still groggy from that serum. No saving the day and certainly no mystery-solving for at least a few hours.”

The Master snatched his hands back and crossed his arms, forcing his expression to remain neutral. “Is that so?”

“Doctor’s orders,” he said, flashing his most charming smile and dotting it with a wink.

The Master raised his eyebrow, amused enough to let the Doctor win his little game. “What do you suggest we do until then?”

The Doctor’s smile changed with his eyes, going dark and wanting as he swept his arm behind him. “Bedroom’s this way.”

Undeterred by the Master’s withering look, the Doctor reached for his hands again, smirking victoriously when the man didn’t resist.

* * *

“Did all of your adventures have intermissions like this?”

“Hmm?”

The Master’s one arm was occupied with hugging the Doctor into his bare chest, so he used the other to gesture at the intertwined pile of limbs on the bed as they dozed lazily.

“I really hope not,” he continued, turning his nose up in disgust. “Especially considering how often you chose to travel with other species.”

The Doctor looked up at him, his brow furrowing with the beginnings of understanding.

“It’s inappropriate to say the least. A dazzling Time Lord swooping in and dangling the promise of the whole universe in front of some star-struck primitive with no hope of turning down such compelling pickup lines as, ‘Now if you _really_ want to see stars…’.”

“W-wha-No! That… that wasn’t… I didn’t..." The Doctor let out an exasperated huff. "Besides, you’re not—”

The Master snorted and shot him a look, brow arching in question. “I’m not what?”

“You’re not my… companion.” The Doctor seemed to struggle with the word, realizing he didn’t have a follow up to describe exactly _what_ the Master was in relation to him.

He scoffed. “Of course I’m not a _companion_ ,” he said, the word falling out of his mouth with more distaste than he’d anticipated. “No, no. In this situation, I’m the dazzling Time Lord. Obviously.”

The Doctor gave his arm a playful slap. “Have you been like this the whole time I was asleep? No wonder Martha was in a mood when I woke up.”

The Master grumbled. They’d already had this conversation once — “ _You seriously said ‘I am the Master, and you will obey me’? Seriously_ ?" the Doctor had asked, nearly choking with laughter. " _Your thirteenth self called, and he wants his tagline back.” —_ but the Doctor had been understanding, grateful even, for the Master’s quick thinking that got them safely into the time vortex.

“You could stand to be a little nicer to her,” the Doctor said quietly.

“If you don’t use a firm hand, they become disobedient and make messes in the house.”

The Doctor groaned, pressing his head into the Master’s side as his thoughts drifted back to the distress call and the impending destruction of Surveil-1.

“So you said you have a theory about the facility?”

“I do.”

The Doctor slithered further onto the Master’s body, resting his cheek on his stomach so he could gaze up into his eyes. “Well, Mr. Time Lord, I’m ready to be dazzled.”


	4. Chapter 4

“Half of those chemicals are illegal in three systems,” the Master explained, trying and failing to ignore the way the Doctor was shoveling his breakfast into his face. “And the facility seemed very nearly empty, aside from the guards. Can’t imagine it’s an actual prison. Combined with the fact that they’re making custom formulations and gathering data on how they affect different species...”

“Y’think they’re experimenting on the captives?” the Doctor asked through a mouthful of dry toast.

The Master quirked a brow at the interruption, nose scrunching as his gaze followed the crumbs that spilled out of the Doctor’s full mouth. The Doctor’s eyes went wide in apology, and he brushed the crumbs off his lap. Then, embarrassed, he lifted his hand to cover his mouth as he chewed, apparently remembering the extent of his table manners. 

“Sorry, sorry. Go on,” he said through his fingers.

The Master reached around the condiment holder that sat between them — pausing when he realized the plastic squeeze bottles were black and white, while the glass salt and pepper shakers were full of ketchup and mustard respectively — and snatched a napkin out of the silver dispenser to toss at the other man. “Yes, Doctor. For what purpose, I’m not sure yet,” He leaned in closer to the Doctor, eyes serious and voice low. “But I do think someone escaped. It would explain the distress signal your ship picked up.”

“S’possible,” the Doctor said, downing a gulp of tea and scrubbing the napkin across his mouth. “But why program a satellite to self-destruct while you’re waiting for rescue?”

The Master shrugged. “Could’ve been someone else. Someone who had a grudge. Guess we’ll have to find out.”

He stared at the Doctor for a while after that, as if waiting for him to say something, until the man’s eyes flicked away under the scrutiny, settling back on his plate. The Master let out a little huff and snatched up another napkin to dab at the Doctor’s chin.

“What the hell happened to the kitchen?”

His hand dropped as both Time Lords looked up at the sound of Martha’s sleepy voice, the Master having to push up a bit in his seat to peak around the Doctor’s lanky form. She stood just beyond the threshold of the room, rubbing her eyes against the bright, artificial sunlight that streamed through the windows, reflecting off the shiny aqua booths and white-top tables that looked straight out of a garish 50’s Earth diner. 

What caught Martha’s attention next, and which decidedly did  _ not  _ look like part of a 50’s Earth diner was the two feet of clear, blue water that flowed over the floor, distorting the black and white checkered tiles with gentle, curling waves.

“Martha! Good morning!” the Doctor called cheerily. He and the Master had claimed two of the ten swivel-seat barstools that stood in front of a counter opposite the windows, alternating turquoise and pink in their sparkly vinyl cushions. The Doctor spun the top of his stool so he could face her, undeterred by the water that splashed around his ankles. “The TARDIS appears to be rebuilding some rooms now that I’m reconnecting with her. Bit like a factory reset. Nothing to worry about.”

She eyed them suspiciously for a moment, then her gaze slid upwards to follow the neon tubing that zagged across the ceiling, glowing with colored light that cycled through the green, pink, blue, and something not quite in the visible spectrum, before she looked back down at the gallons of water that separated her from the Time Lords. It splashed quietly at some hidden barrier that held it back from spilling out the door inches away from where she stood.

“Oh, don’t worry about that! Just an illusion. I don’t think the TARDIS  _ quite  _ knows what a soda fountain is supposed to be.”

There was a soft rumble and the liquid turned amber, fizzing slightly where the water lapped at the walls, reflections from the colorful lights dancing over the bubbles.

Martha sniffed. “Is that… cherry cola?”

The Doctor considered the change and shrugged. “Possibly? Anway, it’s not real. Just a hologram.  _ Weeeell _ , half-like a hologram. Quarter-like. Actually, it’s more like if a hologram were to—”

The Master set his hand on the Doctor’s shoulder, and the Doctor stilled, clicking his mouth shut with an embarrassed hum.

Martha sighed and took a step, wincing when the soda swirled around her calf. When her foot made contact with the floor, she smiled, pleasantly surprised that her leg was dry. She wandered the rest of the way through the door, stopping at one of the booths near the wall. She placed her hand on the white tabletop and leaned forward to hook her finger into the slat of one of the aluminum blinds. She tugged it down, peering out at the artificially blue sky, with white fluffy clouds scrolling past top-to-bottom instead of side-to-side. She chuckled.

“Just when I think I’ve gotten used to this place.”

The Doctor beamed and picked up one of the laminated menus. “Hungry?” He surveyed the options. “I’d have to recommend the toast. Everything else is a little… greasy.”

Martha turned back around, ready to walk toward them, when something caught her eye. She hadn’t been able to see the jukebox from the doorway, but from the middle of the room, the hefty contraption stood out bright and obnoxious, even against all the other bright and obnoxious accoutrement. Thick plastic columns framed the cherry wood cabinetry, curving in a glowing arch over the top. Bubbles flowed through the glass tubes contained within plastic, casting little shadows on the tarnished metal grill pressed into the front, which looped and curled in apparent imitation of the Time Lords’ written language. The CD covers in the title card tray flipped idly back and forth with soft clicks, seemingly the only sound coming out of the machine. 

“Wow, I honestly don’t know the last time I saw a jukebox,” Martha said with a laugh. “Does it actually take quarters?”

She’d approached it, and before the Doctor could yell for her to stop, she’d touched one of the buttons.

A deafening drumbeat blared out of the speakers, causing Martha and the Doctor’s hands to fly over their ears as the Doctor’s plate danced to the back edge of the counter, skittering on the bassy vibrations before splashing through the fake soda and breaking apart on the floor. 

Then, as quick as it started, the sound vanished.

“Sorry. That was me,” the Master said when Martha’s stunned gaze returned to the Time Lords at the counter. He tapped the side of his head. “Ship picked up some of the drumming when I… hotwired it.” He paused to sip his tea, pinky finger and eyebrow raised in mocking scorn while Martha flushed. He smacked his lips. “Should work its way out as the systems reintegrate.”

“No harm done," the Doctor said quietly. Then he cleared his throat. "C’mon, Martha, pull up a chair.”

She approached the counter, sitting intentionally on the other side of the Doctor to keep him between her and the Master. The vinyl squeaked as she got comfortable, and a cinnamon bagel appeared at her place. The Doctor pouted at it jealously.

The Master swallowed a bite of his own food. “We should see if the ocean got fixed,” he mused.

The Doctor furrowed his brow in confusion, before his mouth dropped in horror. “Oh… _ no _ ! No, no, I had it just the way I liked it!”

The Master barked out a laugh, and Martha looked between the pair questioningly.

“What do you mean, ‘the ocean’?” she asked, spreading a napkin over her lap and biting into the toasted bagel.

But the Doctor was already running out the door, fake soda splashing and fizzing around his legs, muttering “ _ no, no, no _ ” to himself as he went, the Master’s laughter following the frothy wake.

When his footsteps faded down the hall, the Master quieted and took another bite of toast, watching Martha out of the corner of his eye and delighting in her confusion.

“It was one of the first rooms he tried to manually program after he  _ borrowed  _ this rust bucket,” he said as he pushed his plate away. He turned in his stool to face her, resting an elbow on the counter, his brow arched in a half-serious indication that he was letting her in on a secret. “He said ‘Every TARDIS has a pool room.  _ Mine’s _ going to have an  _ ocean _ room.’” He rested his cheek against his hand and chuckled. “So he spent days trying to configure it, refusing to let me help because he just  _ had  _ to do it himself.” 

He paused and noticed Martha leaning forward, listening intently, her lips parted, caught halfway between a smile and bemusement.

Never one to pass up the opportunity to entertain, he continued, “After about a week, he told me it was ready. Felt like we hiked three miles to get to it, since he couldn’t figure out how to make the TARDIS move it closer to the main control room. Mind you, that meant the lazy bastard spent most of the time programming the settings without actually seeing the results because it was too far to walk back and forth.” The Master sipped his tea, pleased as he settled back into the memory. 

“Finally we get there, and the door slides open, and his face just… drops.” His voice started to shake from laughter again. “The room is the size of an ocean, sure. Sand as far as you can see. But the water is… it’s just…” The Master pressed his fist against his teeth in an insincere attempt to contain his giggling. “It’s maybe, I don’t know… How much water can fit in those above ground pools you have on Earth? 6000 gallons?”

Martha gave a half-hearted laugh and shrugged. 

“Say it was 6000 gallons. But the best part…” He stifled another laugh. “It was just  _ floating _ there, in the middle of the room, ten feet above the floor. A big liquid bubble the size of a backyard pool, hovering in the air because...” He snorted, a shine of gleeful tears pricking at the corner of his eye. “Because he couldn’t figure out how to apply gravity uniformly throughout the space. Oh, and he was just  _ devastated _ .” 

The way the Master smiled around the word made it clear the Doctor’s failure had been absolutely delightful, and Martha grinned in spite of herself. 

“Granted, it was at least salt water. So I turned to him, completely straight-faced” — he dropped his amused grin to demonstrate — “and said, ‘Not bad, my dear Doctor. But aren’t there supposed to be fish?’ And he looked at me and said ‘I  _ knew _ it was missing something! Come on!’” The Master started laughing again, nearly out of breath as he doubled over, and Martha was struggling not to laugh along as well. 

“So we run all the way back to the control room, and he lets me add a few schools of fish. When I told him we could add more water too, he prattled off some rubbish about how” — he pitched his voice to a high, sing-songy whine — “the current volume fits within the standard definition of an ocean if you consider the average size of  _ all  _ known oceans on  _ all _ known planets in the universe and blah, blah, blah.” He paused for a moment to drop the mocking tone, his laughter having quieted, his eyes seeming to unfocus. “Then he said it was fine it didn’t turn out the way he’d envisioned, because it turned out better than he could’ve imagined, and he wouldn’t change it even if he could.” He sighed a little, then remembering himself, sipped his mug and tossed Martha a look. “But that’s to be expected. He always does that.”

Her smile faultered, eyes scanning his face, unable to parse his expression. “He always does what?”

Then the Master smiled, catlike and conniving: “He lies.”

* * *

They found the Doctor worrying over the TARDIS controls, typing furiously and squinting at a scanner, reading glasses perched on the end of his nose. 

“Found it!” he suddenly cried, flying back from the keys, arms raised in victory. “Still in the same spot too! And it doesn’t appear to have been affected.” He spun on his heel, grinning at Martha and the Master. “Should we go take a look?”

Martha folded her arms, like an amused parent attempting to be stern. “What about the satellite?” 

The Doctor rubbed the back of his neck, suddenly bashful. “Well, about that… I’m still working some of those chemicals out of my system. It’ll be safer if we wait a bit.” He peered hopefully at the other two, rocking back and forth on his heels excitedly.

“Oh, alright,” the Master groused. “But only if I can move the stupid thing closer.”

* * *

“So you two made this… together?” Martha asked incredulously as she stared up at the floating globe of water. 

The three of them were sitting on a picnic blanket in the sand, the “ocean” hovering directly over them. Fish swam overhead, backs toward the trio below, with the extra gravity field keeping their bellies pulled toward the center of the orb. The surface rippled as the bright red dorsal fins of one of the schools breached it momentarily, sending scattered light dancing over the group.

“Are you leaving out the part where one of you tried to drown the other in it?”

“Don’t see how I’d drown him. You’d need a ladder to get up there.” The Master scanned the Doctor out of the corner of his eyes. “Or he could stand on his toes.”

The Doctor gave the Master’s arm a playful slap and he reclined, propped on his elbows with his legs bisecting the blanket. “We’ve known each other a long time,” he said, his eyes bright as he looked down his nose at Martha. “We only try to kill each other, what? Every two or three regenerations? This room came about when we were on amicable terms.”

The Master snorted and gave the Doctor a knowing look, causing the man to blush.

“I will never understand you two,” Martha said with a dry laugh before she fell back onto the blanket, head next to the Doctor’s trainers.

They stayed like that a while, Martha and the Doctor with their arms crossed behind their heads, the Master sitting up, one knee bent in front of him, resting back on his palms, all of them watching the strange ball ripple above them. The fish inside floated happily through the light, their eyes occasionally darting down to some movement on the blanket. At some point, Martha fell asleep, her face peaceful as she dozed. The Doctor noticed when her breathing evened out, and uncrossed his arms, reaching one out to lay his palm over the back of the Master’s hand.

_ How long do you want to stay?  _ he asked, the words popping directly into the Master’s mind.

_ You tell me. How’s your connection with the TARDIS? _

As if on cue, the TARDIS juddered, engines groaning as they bounced along the turbulence in the vortex. He glanced over the Doctor’s repose and saw that it hadn’t woken Martha.

_ Still not sure what’s causing that interference?  _ the Master asked.  _ It’s strange she won’t touch down on the asteroid, don’t you think? _

A beat passed.

_ I’m not talking about the satellite. _

The Master sighed, choosing not to remark on the Doctor’s avoiding the question.  _ Ask me after my next one or two regenerations. _ It was just a joke, a throwaway line that shouldn’t have upset the Doctor as much as it did, but he felt the spike of anxiety zip through his mind.

“Don’t say that,” he said, forcefully enough that he vocalized it, and immediately cleared his throat, an embarrassed attempt at hiding the outburst.

The Master frowned at him in mock pity, then returned his gaze to the wobbling bubble of water floating above them: the strange, aquatic world of their own making, its occupants swimming with languid disinterest in their presence. Shifting his weight to his other arm, he turned his hand palm up and laced their fingers together, squeezing lightly. 

Seemingly satisfied, the Doctor settled back, eventually dozing off himself.

When he heard a slight snore escape the Doctor’s throat, he checked that Martha’s eyes were still closed before sitting up slightly and reaching his free hand into his pocket. He pulled out the syringe he’d kept hidden, quickly popped off the cover to confirm the needle hadn’t been damaged, and snapped it back closed. He lifted the corner of the blanket and dug a small hole in the sand, laying the syringe there before pushing the sand back over it and smoothing the blanket back out. Then he lowered himself onto his back, smiling when the Doctor hummed happily in his sleep.


	5. Chapter 5

_“You’re going to disappear as soon as you get your hands a TARDIS, aren’t you?”_

_Twin suns carved up a flawless ocher sky, warming the faces of the two boys laying side-by-side, cradled in the sprawling field at the base of a snow capped mountain._

_“Of course I am!” Theta announced proudly. He held his arms straight up then let them fall open wide, gazing dreamily upward. “Got the whole universe to see.”_

_Koschei stayed quiet until Theta, seemingly realizing his mistake, turned on his side, smiling wide as his fingers crawled playfully across the red grass to take the other boy’s hand._

_“But you’ll come with me, right? I don’t want to go if you’re not with me.”_

The Master jolted awake from the dream and watched the image of that young, smiling face dissipate like vapor, leaving behind a cold emptiness in his gut and the ever-fading memory of a time when he still believed the promises the Doctor so carelessly made. He closed his fist, almost still feeling the way their hands had touched, the contact pricking with resistance, like the matching poles of magnets being forced together as they struggled to burst apart. 

Oh, and how they had erupted _violently_ , flinging away from each other to the far corners of the universe, leaving destruction in their wake. But since something in the core of their beings seemed incapable of reconciling their insistent need to be apart with their relentless desire to be close, they were pressed toward each other again.

And again.

And again.

The drumming in his head banged away, steadier and louder than it had been since he’d resurrected, galloping toward the draw of the strange, echoing beat, which grew even clearer now, calling him forward. He let the noise envelope him and felt the Doctor hug him tighter in his sleep, and he sank back into his dreams.

* * *

“You want to land it _manually_? What do you think the fast return is for?”

“The fast return has an accuracy of plus or minus eighteen months, you dimwit. Unless you want to watch me get elected Prime Minister of the asteroid, just shut up and watch me demonstrate how a TARDIS is _supposed_ to be piloted.”

Martha leaned against a coral strut and watched as the Time Lords chased each other around the central console, the Doctor flipping switches on and the Master trailing behind to flip them off, throwing levers instead, which the Doctor would disengage as soon as he looped back around.

“And Martha, I thought I said to get rid of that gun!” the Doctor shouted exasperatedly as he tried to keep up with the Master’s adjustments. “No, no, no, this is set way too high! The time vortex can handle these sorts of energy pulses, but we can’t just… Ugh!” 

He ran around to the other side of the console to check something, and the Master waved his hand to get Martha’s attention, nodding his head toward the guard’s laser gun she’d been tasked with discarding, knowing she wasn’t keen on being without it. She looked down at it, then back up at him, deliberating for a moment before she handed the weapon over. With a conspiratorial wink, he snatched the gun and slid it into his waistband, tugging his black blazer around him to conceal it. She responded with an uneasy smile, and the Master returned his attention to the controls.

“If we land too early, you’re risking a temporospatial overlap,” the Doctor said. “Just reroute power from the randomizer and use the fast return! It has built-in fail safes!”

“The randomizer…? Are you _joking_?” He pinched the bridge of his nose and muttered, “Of all the Time Lords I could’ve been stuck with, I get you.” 

The Doctor shot him an affronted look, and the Master took advantage of his pause to key in a command to the ship, cancelling the Doctor’s previous execution.

The Doctor put his hand on his hip and huffed. “If you try to manually program the coordinates to that level of accuracy, you’re going to need massive amounts of power or we won’t re-enter properly. Have you ever been in a TARDIS stuck in a partial materialization? Because let me tell you—”

“Yes, yes, Doctor, I was there when you failed your piloting exam. You can spare us the details.” The Master leaned toward Martha, mimed rubbing his balled fist under his eye, and mouthed, “ _He cried_.”

“Oi!” the Doctor shouted, spying the charade when he peeked around the central column.

The Master ignored him. “Now, Martha, use that darling human imagination your species is apparently so renowned for, and tell me: what do you think a randomizer does?”

The Doctor glared at the Master, then shot Martha a pleading look. Looking uncomfortable, she shifted on her feet.

The Master _tsk_ ed, continuing to adjust settings. “Maaartha, I’m waaaiting,” he sang.

“Erh… it… randomizes things? The Doctor uses it to program random coordinates into the TARDIS.” She smiled at the Doctor and added softly, “Makes it more fun that way, he says.”

“Very good! I see your time spent with the Doctor hasn’t completely turned your brain to mush.” The Master clicked a knob several positions to the right, eyeing the dial of the nearby pressure valve for a beat before nodding happily. “Now, if you had a navigation component such as the fast return switch, which requires a steady, predictable energy source in order to perform a temporal sync with a margin of error less than a second and a spatial sync with a margin of error of less than a millimeter,” he said, spinning to grin at her, “would you funnel power from a _randomizer_ into it?

Her eyes flicked from him to the Doctor, then back to him. “...No?”

“Correct! What a charmingly astute human.” He held his hand over his mouth as if conferring a secret to the Doctor behind him, not bothering to lower his voice. “I don’t know how you convinced UNIT to let us borrow her.” 

He spun back around, smirking at the other Time Lord, who reluctantly stepped away from the console to let the Master work, likely realizing it would be faster to observe and jump in at the end in case something went wrong. His mouth twitched, arms folded tightly around his body as the Master flipped more switches.

“No, you wouldn’t opt for the fast return, would you? Because you’re _clever_ , Martha Jones, and clever people do clever things like circumventing the fast return switch all together, using auxiliary power to charge the stabilizers, and condensing the time warp field in preparation for one hell of a tight landing.” His hands flew deftly over the console as he danced around to the controls on the other side. “Because _that_ would give your navigation system accuracy down to the nanosecond.” He threw the handbrake forward, and the TARDIS sang.

Martha peered around the room in wonderment as the noise echoed through the cavernous space. “I’ve never heard it sound like that before…”

The Master laughed. “Despite what the Doctor may tell you, _I’m_ not the one that abuses her.” A boom shook through their bones as the ship asserted itself back into reality. There was a brief silence before the banging on the door resumed, along with the muffled shouting of guards outside. They’d landed right when they’d left.

“ _Hah!_ Now _that_ is how you pilot this thing!”

Despite himself, the Doctor looked nervously impressed. “Not bad,” he said, reaching into his pocket for his screwdriver and turning to Martha. “Alright, I’m going to use the sonic to short out their impression shields. Should incapacitate the guards for a few minutes while we get down to the control room.”

The Master cleared his throat to catch the Doctor's attention, and he waited for the man to face him, patiently tapping a beat of four against the console. The other Time Lord watched the Master's hand then clicked his mouth shut.

“Doctor, I wasn’t finished explaining all the impressive things I did.”

The Doctor blinked at him. “Erh… Master, maybe later—”

The other man continued as if he hadn’t heard him. “You see, Martha, there are two problems with keeping around giant wastes of space like the ocean room.”

“Wait, wha—”

“ _First_ ,” he continued, cutting the Doctor off with a warning glare, “it’s a testament to my dear friend’s sentimentality. And I just can’t go on indulging his vices. The other issue is that, when the dimensional dams aren’t constructed properly, the time warp field expands and bangs into all sorts of things. That wouldn’t cause issues during normal operation, but it can cause a bumpy ride if, say” — he lowered his voice, eyes narrowing — “your TARDIS has already landed nearby.”

The color drained from the Doctor’s face. “Bu—”

“So I jettisoned it! We really should’ve done that earlier, you know. It would’ve saved us all that time teleporting back and forth from the satellite to the asteroid.” 

He cackled over the rising din of the guards outside, and the Doctor made a strangled noise, staggering backward and gripping for the strut to brace himself.

“What’s he talking about, Doctor?” Martha asked, worry creeping into her voice.

“A perfect segue into the bonus round! Martha Jones, double or nothing, answer me this: what is it the Doctor always does?”

Martha’s mouth dropped open, and she gaped at the Doctor, who stood frozen, his back pressed against the pillar.

“Master, please,” he whispered, voice shaking.

“Uh-uh-uh, Doctor,” the Master said, wagging his finger at the other man. “It’s Martha’s turn to speak.” He met her gaze again, smiling pleasantly despite the mad gleam in his eye. “Come on Martha, clock’s ticking.” The banging on the doors quieted, replaced by the hiss of the plasma torch engaging as the guards continued their futile attempt to break into the ship. “What is it the Doctor _always_ does?”

Martha glared at the Master and answered begrudgingly. “He lies.”

The Master brightened. “Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner! I’d give the Doctor a chance to defend himself, but due to that aforementioned tendency, I really don’t care to hear what he has to say.”

“Wa—”

“ _Silence!”_ the Master bellowed. Then his body eased back, an undulation of calm running through him as the smile returned to his face. “It’s rude to interrupt, Doctor. Besides, I gave you plenty of opportunities to come clean, and you didn’t. Want to know what I think is going on? Not only do you think I’m involved with whatever is happening at this facility, you were planning on dragging me into a fixed temporal point _without telling me_.” He drummed his fingers against the control panel, lip curling. “Can’t say I ever enjoyed being dangled in front of the jaws of Time like a piece of meat.”

His eyes flicked to the Doctor’s shaking hands, and he huffed a dry laugh. “I take it I’m right, then. To be fair, your thoughts were leaking like a sieve, so I may have cheated a bit. But even if the drugs made it easy to read your mind, I don’t know if you can blame them for your woeful lapse in judgement. You _felt_ the fixed point, and you knew I _couldn’t_ , because the me that’s heading toward it _is already down there."_ He bared his teeth, jutting his chin out in challenge. "You _lied_ to me.”

There wasn’t a question in the raging accusation, and the Doctor remained silent, even as his mouth opened and closed with the desire to speak. He knew there was nothing he could say.

The life form scanner belted an alarm, and, momentarily distracted, the Master grabbed the edge of the screen, wrenching it around to read the alert. The banging outside the TARDIS was abruptly replaced by panicked shouting and the sounds of the teleport activating.

“ _Judoon_?!” He wheeled back around, aghast. “Did you honestly call the Shadow Proclamation?!”

“ _No_! No, that wasn’t me. Master, I swear!”

Ignoring the denial, the Master snarled and shoved the screen away. “This day just keeps getting _better and better_.” He ran his hand through his hair and tapped his finger to his lips, considering. “Seeing as your imprimatur is more than willing to let me pilot, I should get going before one of them decides to execute me on sight.” 

He pulled the laser gun from his waistband and aimed at the Doctor, prompting a worried squeak out of Martha. 

“I’ll leave you two to it then. I’m sure you’ve got enough time to disable that self destruct and plan some miraculous escape before the place is swarming with police. Oh! That reminds me. Martha, be a dear and toss me that vortex manipulator before you go. There’s a love.”

When she didn’t move, the Master held his hand out, palm up, waving his fingers expectantly. She knotted her brow in an angry glare and unbuckled the cuff from her wrist, tossing it deliberately into the middle distance, where it clattered to the floor.

The Master slowly let his hand drop, smiling patiently. “Don’t look so cross. I’m trying to be _nice.”_ His cold eyes slid over to the other Time Lord, glittering with cruelty. “Doctor’s orders.”

The Doctor pressed his eyes closed and looked away, and the Master returned his attention to Martha.

“I know that I haven’t always been the kindest to you, Doctor Jones. Can’t say I care much for you irksome little species as a whole, but credit where credit is due. Not only did you evade me for a whole year, you’re _personally_ responsible for undoing that entire year of my hard work.” 

She eyed the gun in his hand, then tried to step backwards, realizing she was still pressed against the coral strut with nowhere to go. The Master watched her with a curious expression.

“Don’t worry, I’m not mad. Water under the bridge. Anyway, we both know it was the Doctor who sent you on that expedition, don't we?” Martha’s gaze snapped to the Doctor, who was still watching the Master in disbelief, looking sicker by the minute. He didn’t wait for her response. “That’s what he _does_ , isn’t it? He collects things that he thinks are small and weak and gives them an opportunity to feel _important_. And you know why he does it? Because the Doctor values feeling important above everything, no matter the cost. As long as he gets to save the day, it doesn’t matter if he’s got to lose a companion here and there, or damn his entire race to the hellfires of war, just so long as he gets to be the savior. So long as he gets to be _special_.”

_You always behaved like you were different, like you were... like you were special._

A spike of pain shot behind his eyes, and he gritted his teeth, looking around as if he'd heard someone else speak. When he looked back at the Doctor, he noticed his eyes were swimming with tears as fury and misery contorted his face. 

The Master watched him for a moment, wondering if he wanted to know which emotion would win out. Then he cleared his throat. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to go make sure I never wind up here.” He reached back for the door opening mechanism, then immediately doubled over as pain exploded in his head, a thundering drumbeat drilling down into his brain. He dropped the gun to fist his hands in his hair as he crumpled to the floor with a cry. Through his tear-blurred vision, he saw the Doctor take a step forward, and he groaned, grabbing for the gun again to take shaky aim at the other Time Lord. 

The Doctor froze mid-step, eyeing the gun nervously.

“Good news for you," the Master grumbled. "I don’t think you’ll have any trouble finding me before this timeline unwinds.”

“What’s wrong? What do you mean?" the Doctor asked desperately. "Please, I can help, just let me...”

The Master grinned again, mad and scary and the Doctor trailed off. “But they’re so loud now, Doctor. Surely you can hear them!” He stood with a wince and slammed his free hand down on the button behind him. The TARDIS doors flew open, making his intentions obvious. 

“Just follow the drums!”


	6. Chapter 6

“ _You did this to me!” the Master bellowed. “All of my life! You made me!”_

_Rassilon staggered when another bolt of energy hit him square in the chest._

_“ONE.” Another blast. “TWO.” Another “THREE… FOUR.”_

_Rassilon fell as the portal began to close, and the Master felt himself being pulled through the void the massive planet was leaving behind. Exhausted, his body folded forward, and he dropped to his knees. He realized immediately he’d burned through too much of his life force to be able to anchor himself to anything, his vision beginning to dim even as everything blew out white and bright around him. At least he could die knowing the Doctor would be in his debt._

_Then he felt arms vice around his waist, hauling him backwards._

_“I’ve got you!” the Doctor shouted over the violent rush of air._

_Everything went white._

_When he opened his eyes again, he found he was lying on his back, staring up at the shattered glass dome above. He was vaguely disappointed that this view from Earth would be the last thing he’d ever see when the Doctor’s face moved into his field of vision. The man was bruised and bloodied and staring down at him with a level of worry in his eyes that convinced the Master this was it. He took another labored breath, struggling with the pain deep in the core of his chest._

_“I can help,” the Doctor said desperately. “Please, let me help you.”_

_The Master managed a passable glare before he slipped into unconsciousness._

* * *

“ _Finally_ ,” he muttered, uncurling his grip from the butt of the gun and wincing when it clattered to the metal floor. Pressing his eyes closed, he rubbed at his temples. Between the drumming and Doctor’s whining and Martha’s shrilling, his head felt near to burst. Not to mention the confusion caused by overlapping his personal timeline. 

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t interacted with his other versions before, but the mental haziness and the dueling drumbeat that echoed back from the parallel mental process of his other self was new. It must’ve been due to the proximity of the fixed point the Doctor had them barreling toward.

Oh, but he was going to course correct that mistake if it was the last thing he ever did. The Master was going to make sure he _never_ ended up on that rock with the Doctor. 

He twisted his neck, groaning when the tension released with a sharp _pop_ that sounded through the newly vacant ship. Now that he had phased back into the vortex after unceremoniously booting the other two passengers, the din was clearing, the dueling beat gone. But the drums, _his_ drums, were still present, ringing through his mind. A clear and steady call to war.

_Gallifrey._

His eyes snapped open, and he marched toward the glowing panels of the telepathic circuit. He reached out, flexing his grip in a moment of hesitation before he placed his palm against the smooth surface. With a gentle hum, it began to charge beneath his hand, the glowing light flickering around his fingers, warming under his touch as the TARDIS responded back through the link. He felt a twinge in his head and focused, pulling down his mental barriers to offer up the drums up, letting the TARDIS hone in on the signal. And with a static spark, he felt the connection, and his mind jolted at once forward and backward in time, spanning all of space, stretched entirely too thin across too many dimensions. 

He was aware of the pain, but not of his physical reaction to it. The signal spanned so far, bleeding through the untempered schism until it was embedded in everything: all of time, all of space, with the root buried agonizingly deep in his mind. 

And it was so _loud_. 

He could see everything, taste everything, hear everything; there were infinite sensations he knew he’d forget, and backgrounding all of them was the incessant beat of four.

A vision broke through, moving into focus, clearer than everything else: he was eight years old, looking into the schism, hearing the drums for the first time. He felt cold from how scared he was, from how dark it was. There was a rushing in his stomach like he was free falling into the vortex itself. Panic rose up in him.

Somehow he was still conscious of the physical sensation of his palm pressed against the telepathic circuit, and he reigned his awareness inward, back toward himself, his current self, and he ripped his hand away, falling to the floor in a heap.

He panted, blinking up at the ceiling, willing his eyes to see properly again, trying to slow his thundering hearts. He was distantly aware of the metallic smell of blood in his nose. 

Unsure about whether his limbs were responsive, he slid his gaze up to the monitor from where he lay. Calculations were flying across the screen as the TARDIS continued to process the signal. Then the text went still, the display only reading one line: The coordinates to Gallifrey. Not time locked out of reach at all… No, it was simply sitting in a bubble universe, tucked away. Hiding. 

And he had the map straight to it.

He barked out a hoarse laugh, then another, and soon he was curled on his side with the grates pressing into his cheek, laughing hysterically. Tears streamed down his face as his body struggled to reconcile the hysterical delight with the maddening pain.

He could go home. He could _finally_ go home.

He couldn’t wait to see if Rassilon had regenerated from all the hits of artron energy he’d been blasted with back on Earth. And if he hadn’t, the Master would joyfully shoot him in the face with his new laser gun to set the record straight. Then he’d demand the drumming be removed from his head, and once he was free from the sound, he’d make sure Rassilon regenerated a few more times for his trouble.

He’d demand a TARDIS too, of course. Oh, and it would be so _nice_ to finally travel in a modern machine again. Maybe another Mark 212, like the one he had in the War when he’d been resurrected and used as a weapon. 

Really, it was the least the High Council could do after what they’d put him through.

But first, there was the minor issue of getting out of this fixed event looming in his future. 

He wiped the blood out from under his nose with his sleeve and pushed himself up from the floor, then walked around to the other side of the console. Predictably, the syringe of drugs from the facility was laying across the grates, having been deposited there after the TARDIS identified it as a foreign object in the ocean room he’d deleted earlier. He plucked it up off the floor, then skipped back around the pillar to scoop up the gun and the vortex manipulator.

He eyed his little treasure trove and considered his next move. 

He couldn’t remember ever being in a facility like the one on the asteroid in any of his past lives, so he had to assume it was a future version of himself down there now. And he knew he couldn’t flee this corner of the universe in hopes of avoiding the fixed event without knowing what might draw him back in his future. No, he’d have to go back to before the TARDIS ever landed on the asteroid, park it there for the first time, figure out how he was involved, and break himself out of the timeline. 

And in order to do that, he needed to know what his future self was up to down there. Clearly the fricking Doctor had some ideas...

Wait.

He cleared his throat. “Fricking Doctor… Fuuuuuh-ricking Doctor.” He smacked his palm against his forehead. “Oh, you miserable son of a... _Ugh,_ Doctor, did you actually enable the swear filter on your translation circuit? You” — he keyed a command into the ship — “fucking _arsehole._ ” He took a slow breath and sighed happily. “Much better. Now, how did the Doctor think I was going to fuck up this time?”

He ruminated on what he would _like_ to do and considered it a good enough prediction for what his future self actually did. What he would _like_ to do was go in guns blazing, considering he had a gun and a syringe full of chemicals that would be deadly to most species. Even now, he felt himself boiling with rage at what the Doctor had done, and he thought of all the ways he could take that frustration out on the inhabitants of nearby planets. 

Fixed points tended to be monumental, and even though it didn’t take much for the Doctor to lie, the fact that he kept entirely quiet about a time event to the only other Time Lord in this universe was concerning to say the least. He gripped the gun, clenched fingers going white at the knuckles as his anger grew.

He’d show the Doctor…

First he programmed the location of Gallifrey into Martha’s vortex manipulator. Then with a press of keys, he wiped the coordinate log from the TARDIS. Next, he ran to the medical bay, approaching the second bed and, tugging open the third drawer down of the little nightstand, he dumped the vortex manipulator, the gun, and the syringe inside. This would be the first step in breaking out of the predetermined events: become unpredictable. Shake the timeline like it was a taut wire, forcing it to bend more and more until it snapped.

Satisfied with his arbitrarily obvious hiding spot (and the fact that he still had Gallifrey’s location without risking the Doctor ever accessing it via the TARDIS), he returned to the console and prepared to land on the asteroid for the first time.

Then he paused, hands stilling over the controls.

Going straight back was risky. He could try to land closer to the TARDIS’s future first, get a glimpse of what was actually going on in the facility before he entered the event loop for real. But that would take longer and further complicate the timeline, potentially scrambling his mind more than it had been previously. Besides, that kind of carefully calculated planning was something he must have already done. No, if he was going to break out of this timeline, he was going to need to be more impulsive than that. More reckless.

He eyed the randomizer button.

OK, maybe not _that_ reckless. He wasn’t the Doctor, after all.

He flipped a series of switches on the console, and willed himself to ignore the palpable temptation to start up a facility for experimenting on lower psychic species with torturous chemical cocktails. He gripped the hand break, and he took a deep breath. Not to worry, he could always start something similar some other time, preferably after his glorious return from Gallifrey.

He wasn’t a saint after all, and the plan could surely move forward outside of the grip of this particular timeline. Where the Doctor oozed faux morality, the Master was a realist. He understood that the inhabitants of this universe were motivated by selfishness in the face of chaos. Whatever he was doing in that facility must be benefiting him in some way, so it would be a shame to turn his back on it. 

Or he’d just been bored and felt like hurting someone.

He thought of his future self back on the asteroid, wondering if the Doctor had found him. Wondering if he was getting the “you don’t need to own the universe” speech or the “all life has value” speech. Maybe they were embroiled in battle right now, with the Doctor desperately negotiating the release of the prisoners in exchange for disabling the self-destruct. Maybe he’d captured the Doctor and Martha and was pumping them full of fun chemicals right now. 

Maybe the Doctor had already won.

He grimaced.

Not that it mattered. As soon as he broke out of the determined sequence of events, that timeline would fray and dissolve. As close as he was to the fixed event, he wondered if there would be reapers, swarming reality as soon as the fixed point crumpled into a dangerous paradox.

An embarrassing flash of concern for the Doctor had him considering rigging up another paradox machine with the Doctor’s TARDIS in order to hold the fabric of reality together so the reapers couldn’t tear through. He could damn his future self to a continued existence in the Doctor’s shadow, while his current self split off at the fork to forge some new and better future. Seemed like something he’d do: fuck himself over so the Doctor wouldn’t be too put out.

 _No_ , he thought. _Not this time_. 

He was done caring about what the Doctor thought or felt. The man was a lying, self-important, sanctimonious, fricking donkey-face hankey wipe.

He dragged a hand down his face. “OK, _now_ you’re just doing that to annoy me,” he said, hoping he was sending enough of a telepathic glare to the ship that she’d behave. He disabled the swear filter again.

“And kindly fuck you, too, you insolent junk heap.”

He released the handbrake, and the ship groaned as it tried to materialize, juddering as it bumped against its future version’s warp field, screaming alarms at him all the way. He kept one hand on the console to steady himself as the floor shook beneath him, the other flying over the controls, trying to ease her down in the right spot, needing to reconfigure the coordinates everytime she got too close to her other self and bounced out of alignment. He gritted his teeth, forcing her steady until she finally touched down.

In the stillness, he straightened, slowly releasing his grip on the edge of the metal panel, testing his steadiness. Then he looked around the TARDIS, smirking up at the coral pillars of the ancient Type 40, and thinking back on all the time he’d spent with the Doctor since the man had swept him away from Earth after his botched resurrection. It was a perfect storm of all their desires: the Doctor needed someone to fix, the Master needed someone to lord over.

It was the longest they’d spent traveling together in centuries. The Doctor seemed relieved at not being alone while the Master was simply content the Doctor had nowhere to run. It had started to feel like what they’d always wanted, like the Doctor was fulfilling the promise he’d made (and broken) almost a millennium earlier. They’d even stopped back on Earth to snag a little pet human for the Doctor to play with. 

A perfect little family.

And all this time, he thought if he kept the man close, if he sunk his claws in deep enough, if he made his home where the other man did so that there was nowhere for either Time Lord to flee, the Doctor would finally stop hurting him.

“Well, it was good while it lasted,” he told the TARDIS, anger flaring at the edge of his voice. “Let’s not do this again.”

* * *

Four hours. It only took _four fricking hours_ before he was captured.

He snarled and tore against the restraints again, wrists numb before he gave up with an exasperated huff, facility employees eyeing him warily from a safe distance. 

Focusing on his link with the TARDIS, he projected an image of himself ripping out her translation circuit and turning it into a pretty necklace. His mood didn’t improve much when the swear filter disengaged again, but at least it was something.

Because of fucking _course_ his future self would’ve left the gun on the ship thinking that _his_ future self had taken it. 

And of course his current self would’ve overestimated his future self’s abilities, assuming he had been running the damn facility instead of a _bloody inmate._

It was all a big, stupid loop of him leaving the gun behind, over and over, and he really couldn’t think of the last time he hated another version of himself this much. 

A little MediBot rolled up, similar to the one he’d seen a few days ago and approximately one decade in the future, alongside a slender guard that didn’t seem keen on getting too close.

“Zero matches found. Calculating best formulation.”

The Master’s stomach dropped as the guard picked up a syringe of something yellow, and for a moment he felt his core turn to ice. He could still mentally reach the TARDIS, but a ship as old and obstinate as the Doctor’s wasn’t about to pilot herself to come rescue him.

As the needle slid into his neck, his anger erupted like an inferno, tearing through him and feeding back through the connection he still had with the ship where she sat unhelpfully hidden away, mocking him, and he swore he felt an answer bounce back, a booming _one-two-three-four_ shaking through the foundation of the building. The response only served to infuriate him more.

The next time he saw the Doctor, the man was as good as dead.


	7. Chapter 7

**_Koschei?_ **

_“You’re lying. You can hear them,” he sobbed._

_“I can’t, Kosch. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”_

_He fisted his hair and doubled over with a moan, the drums unbearable._

**_Where’s Koschei?_ **

_The dormitory faded away, dissolving until he was surrounded by fire and ruins._

_“Do it! Become death! Become me!”_

**_I promised I’d go back!_ **

_The heat sucked out of the room, cool green grass and grey stone taking its place._

_“I need you to know we’re not so different!” Then quietly, a pleading whisper. “I need my friend back.”_

**_I can’t leave him! Koschei!_ **

* * *

He jerked out of the nightmare, arms immediately meeting resistance from the metal cuffs that bound him to the examination table. He groaned as the painful throb returned to his head, the din of drumming the only thing he could hear in the room. Except...

A rustle of clothing.

The sharp clack of heeled shoes against the floor.

“Oh, poor beardie. Don’t you look terrible.”

It was a woman’s voice, coming from far enough behind him that he didn’t have the energy to even think about turning to look. Her words sounded insincere, the rough brogue serving only to worsen the pounding ache in his head. 

“That’s alright. There’s a shave in your future. Trust me.”

The sharp footsteps circled him, and he gritted his teeth, his head more clouded and the drumming more unrelenting than in all the time since the chemical injections had started eroding away at his mind.

How long had it been?

His grip on his own timeline began to slip away from him again, feeling like he’d been strapped down in that room for thousands of years. Or had it only been a few hours?

He shook his head, trying to clear it.

Thirteen (Gallifreyan) years, ten (Gallifreyan) days, three (Gallifreyan) hours, twelve (Gallifreyan) minutes, and five (Gallifreyan) seconds.

It was exactly how far in the past he had to pilot the TARDIS in order to land her on the asteroid, relative to the moment he’d stolen it, leaving the Doctor and Martha behind. It was exactly how long he had after his first step off the ship until the Judoon swarmed the facility.

But how long had it already been..?

For one, he had no concept of how long a solar cycle was on the asteroid, and no one had the courtesy to tell him. Not that he’d encouraged much friendly chatter. His methods of getting answers early on made it so that only guards with the highest security clearance could approach him, and that was only when they deemed new injections necessary (and even that schedule seemed arbitrary). So he’d been keeping track of how much time had passed in his head.

He remembered the first two years, during which he actively refused to even consider the Doctor would come for him. That pool of hope, shallow as it was, would only serve to drown him. The Doctor had left the Master alone and imprisoned and burning (and sometimes clever combinations of all three) for far longer and in far worse situations than this, so It would be foolish for him to think the man would behave differently now. 

And yet…

By the third year, he had to hope. It was getting harder to keep the facility from burrowing into his mind. His mental barriers rotted to mush, allowing the drums to scream out unhindered, but he remained resolute. Unbroken. Then, after the brutal deaths of seven guards, they stepped up their policy on impression shields, and his wavering connection with the TARDIS remained the only indication for how strong he still was. It was fragile, but he clung to the link, a constant reminder that the potential for help was in the distance. 

By the eighth year, after his most nearly-successful escape attempt (during which he realized the way back to the TARDIS was too heavily guarded, and there wasn’t tech in the facility that would allow him to broadcast a distress call without spending several days ripping cables out of the wall to rig up an antenna), hope had dried up again, leaving a familiar, barren wasteland in his soul, acrid with hatred and hurt.

The facility workers seemed equally impatient. Most of their prisoners proceeded to the second stage of their incarceration — the mysterious “Phase Two”, as they kept calling it — after one or two doses of psychic dampeners, but as the chemical formulations evolved, their colors and consistencies the only indication of stronger doses, the Master realized with some dimsay that it wasn’t only his mental fortitude and superior Time Lord biology that kept him clinging to his faculties. His fate must’ve been tied to the future fixed point. Time wasn’t allowing him to break yet.

He pressed his eyes closed. The woman was saying something again, but the thundering pulse in his temples was becoming unbearable. Every one of her words sounded like it was being propelled through water, and he couldn’t focus.

There was a hand on his cheek and he cracked an eye open with some difficulty, a blurry wash of shapes and colors sharpening into a plum frock coat and matching skirt. A starched white collar. Pale skin and eyes like ice.

“...but I have it on good authority that you’ll be getting out of here very, _very_ soon.” The hand fell away, leaving the ghost of contact cooling on his skin. “I’d tell you to go easy on him, but we never listen, do we?”

The pain in his head spiked, and his eyes squeezed back shut, feeling himself slipping into a fitful sleep as the footsteps clacked in the direction of the exit.

She was right, of course. He’d be woken again in a few minutes by his rescuers, without any memory of the woman or her sage advice. 

* * *

“Are you sure it’s this way?”

“I told you, I don’t know! I’ve never had access to this section before!”

“ _Master!_ ”

He pressed his eyes closed more tightly, flinching away from the noise.

A voice sounded to his immediate left. “Master? Can you hear me?”

“But… but that’s impossible! He was brought in with the two of you not even an hour ago! How can he be here now?”

“Hang on, I’m going to get you out of this.”

He felt hands fluttering over the cuffs at his wrists and ankles, then a jolt of pain behind his eyes at the shrill whine of sonic noise.

_Why is everyone being so damn loud?_ , he thought as the restraints clicked, signalling his release.

He dragged his eyelids open, struggling at their apparent weight. “...Doc..tor?”

A man knelt to the side of him, slowly coming into focus. Still with the same stupid pinstripe suit and the same sad eyes he’d been wearing the last time they saw each other.

When had they last seen each other?

Exhausted from even the minimal effort of recognizing the other Time Lord, his eyes slipped back shut.

“Master, where’s the TARDIS?”

Just a minute to rest...

“ _Master!_ ”

The jolt of fear was enough to make him snap awake. He squinted into the too-bright room, seeing the Doctor, with Martha standing behind him, and someone else, off to the side, shifting his weight as his fingers tugged nervously at fiery orange hair.

Apparently the hypnosis had worn off.

“What did they do to him?” Martha asked breathlessly.

When the Master opened his mouth to ask her if she was always this oblivious, he felt dried blood cracking over his lips. A rasping cough was all that came out.

The Doctor ignored her, instead addressing the Master again. “Master, I’m sorry, but we’re running out of time. I need to know where you hid the TARDIS. I’ll just take a quick peek.”

The words moved through his brain like sludge, and by the time he’d processed their meaning, the Doctor’s fingers were already on his temples. He tried to pull away, but he was too exhausted, his muscles burning and leaden. A cry escaped through gritted teeth when the Doctor slipped into his head.

With his eyes shut, the increased trembling in the Doctor’s fingers was the only reaction he could feel as the other man carded through the years of memories formed since they’d been separated.

“Got it.”

The Doctor slipped out of his head like a knife leaving a wound, and the Master let out a shuddering hiss.

“It’s hidden in a store room. Left out the door, take the right at the end of the hall,” the Doctor was saying, presumably to Martha. “It’ll be the second door on the left, parked in the back corner. He’s rigged a perception filter over it, so you’ll need to feel around. There’s a spare key above the ‘P’.”

The Master’s lip curled. _That was always a stupid hiding spot,_ he thought, and the Doctor must have heard it because the responding scoff was otherwise unprompted.

Martha accepted the instructions without another word, and ran off down the hall. The noise of her boots hitting the floor blended in with the drumming. 

Or was that the crashing of more footfalls?

The click of a restraint snapping shut made his limbs jerk automatically, only to find hadn’t been bound again. Then Vocks started shouting.

“What are you doing?! I helped you! Get me out of this!” he cried, frantically jerking against the cuff like a terrified animal.

“I am helping you,” the Doctor replied flatly. “Trust me. Between him and the Judoon, you’ll be better off with the Judoon.”

Then the Doctor was back at the Master’s side, crouched low so they were eye to eye. “We’re in a bit of a rush. I disabled the self-destruct, but someone called the Shadow Proclamation. You thought it was me, but it _wasn’t_ ,” he said urgently. “I’m going to carry you, alright? Try not to struggle.”

He didn’t have it in him to protest when he felt the Doctor sliding one arm under his knees and the other around his shoulders to lift him. The drumming was so loud it sounded like it was coming from all around him, drowning out Vocks’s pleas, shaking through their bodies as the Doctor hoisted him up. He tried to open his eyes again, but the world began to spin.

He clutched at the Doctor’s shoulders to steady himself, forehead pressed into the man’s neck

“It’s alright, I’ve got you.”

And the Doctor took off running.

* * *

Being unceremoniously dumped into the pilot’s seat minutes later was enough to wake him up again. He managed an indignant huff, but the Doctor had already left his side, instead sprinting around the controls and shouting to Martha as the clamor of Judoon shouts grew louder outside the doors.

The engines groaned, and the ship shook violently as the Doctor rushed her into the time vortex. The resulting silence following their dematerialization filled his head like a cool water soothing over a burn. The fog of confusion vanished, and he felt more alert than he had in ages.

And then he felt it.

“We haven’t hit the fixed point yet,” the Master said, wincing at the way his voice croaked out of his dry throat. Judging by the way Martha was eyeing him, he must’ve looked a sight. He rubbed the back of his hand under his nose, feeling rough whiskers against his skin as he scrubbed some of the dried blood away.

The Doctor turned to him, his face unreadable. “You can feel it now, then?”

Caught off guard at the casual tone, the Master blinked at him, wondering if he had cause to be offended.

“I can,” he said slowly, scrutinizing the other Time Lord. “How long has it been?”

“Since we last saw you? Not long. We found Vocks when we teleported down, and he took us straight to the restricted ward after I disarmed the satellite.” The Doctor said keyed something into the TARDIS and grimacing at what the screen displayed back to him. “For you, it was thirteen years.”

“And who sent the distress signal?”

The Doctor stepped back from the central column and turned to face him. “I don’t know. I couldn’t find the source of it. I scanned the whole control room with my sonic, and nothing could’ve replicated it.”

The Master, of course, knew this.

“Who called the Shadow Proclamation, then?”

The Doctor shook his head. “I don’t know.”

There was no dishonesty in the other man’s face as they stared each other down, but the Master had an inkling that was about to change.

“What about the satellite? Who rigged it to self-destruct?”

The tell was obvious in the way the Doctor averted his gaze, self-consciously chewing his lip with a sharp canine. Martha stood just over the Doctor’s shoulder, arms crossed, eyes flicking between the two, brow raised questioningly.

The Master scoffed. “Thought as much. So what’s your plan now?”

“The Judoon will take care of everyone that’s left at the facility. And you need to get to the medical bay for a diagnostic work up.”

The Doctor’s hands clutched restlessly at his sides, seemingly drawn toward the controls again, and the Master watched for a moment, waiting to see if he would say anything else.

Finally, he lost his patience. “Don’t you _dare_.”

The Doctor startled at the outburst, folding in on himself to avoid having to make eye contact. He looked scared. “I have to,” he whispered.

“You _don’t_ ,” the Master snapped, feeling the strength returning to his voice.

The Doctor looked at him hopelessly, then tipped his head to indicate Martha. His eyes were pleading. 

“Doctor, what’s wrong?” she asked, realizing she was the reason the Doctor didn’t want to elaborate.

It was a charity the Doctor didn’t deserve, but considering it was the only chance to prompt some honest answers out of the other Time Lord, the Master switched to Old High Gallifreyan, knowing the TARDIS wouldn’t be able to translate.

_“If you’re not going to let that wretched place explode, the least you could do is not lure some younger version of me down there by sending the self-destruct sequence yourself.”_

The words swirled like music around the cavernous space of the control room, each sentiment plucked into being as if the air surrounding them was an instrument to be played. The sounds lilted out of the Master’s mouth, ancient and tonal and far too beautiful for the disgust they conveyed, and Martha could only stare in opened mouthed wonder as she struggled to grasp the meaning.

“ _It’s an event loop,”_ the Doctor replied, likewise switching to their formal tongue. “ _Like some form of chronic hysteresis, but instead of being trapped in it, it’s shuttling us toward the fixed point. Our timelines need to progress through it._ ” He took a breath and rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “ _I… erh… future me left instructions directly in the code for how to disable the satellite, so there isn’t any risk of it actually exploding. I intend to do the same when I send the command back through our timeline.”_

The Master barked a laugh. _“Oh, good. No risk then. Except”_ — his eyes narrowed — _“I’ll still be a prisoner down there.”_

The Doctor sighed sadly. “ _All of this is predetermined. Our past selves need to get caught investigating the satellite. If I don’t transmit the self-destruct command back to when we first got the distress signal, we’d be risking the integrity of the event sequence, and it could cause a paradox.”_

_“So let it!”_ the Master bellowed, exasperated. 

A booming beat of four sounded through the TARDIS, rising up as the Master’s frustration spiked, and the three paused to look around.

“What the..?”

“It’s the drums,” the Doctor explained, switching back to English. “You managed to keep a connection with the TARDIS, even after those chemicals broke down your mental barriers. The drums must have —”

“Leaked,” the Master said disdainfully, “throughout your ship. The signal must have integrated with the core systems while I was trapped.” He reached out to hold the metal handrail, feeling the beat thrumming through it, completely out of his control. The rough edges of the ship seemed to blur as the vibrations increased, and even though it’d been years since the Doctor had admitted they were real, the Master thought it strange to have them so on display. “I wonder how far it’s been broadcast.”

The Doctor switched back to their formal tongue, speaking quickly, voice full of desperation. “ _That’s exactly why I can’t break the event loop now, not this close to the fixed point. If anything prevents the necessary fixed events from happening, the resulting paradox could destroy the universe.”_

The Master stood and slowly approached the Doctor, sneering up at him. “ _I’m failing to see how this is my problem_. _”_

The Doctor huffed and glared down his nose at the Master with a level of haughty superiority that made the Master’s eye twitch. “ _You’re the one that stole my ship and stranded us on a satellite that was minutes away from exploding! You’re as wrapped up in this as I am!”_

_“I only left because I needed to investigate the fixed point, since_ someone _had to keep their secrets! Although you seem to have it all figured out now. Still, it would’ve been nice to know ahead of time that I was signing myself up for over a decade of imprisonment.”_

The Doctor seemed to deflate, the anger leaving him in a rush, replaced by a maddeningly pitying frown. “ _I didn’t know you were a prisoner until we found you_ ,” he said sadly. “ _I wasn’t even sure the fixed point had anything to with the prophecy until I heard_ —”

The drums blared through the ship again, but the Master kept his gaze locked on the Doctor, head tipping to the side. “ _Prophecy...? The Ood prophecy?_ ” His voice rose to a shout. “ _So this was, what? Some kind of death wish? A suicide mission?! This is just…”_ He paced the small section of grated floor between the Doctor and the enclosing handrail behind him, like an animal circling a cage. “ _This is so typical! You never could resist abandoning people._ ”

Hands flying up in surrender, the Doctor hushed his voice to a calming tone that only infuriated the Master more. “ _No! No, that isn’t what I meant to do. I just… please. I needed you with me. I was worried if I told you, you’d do something drastic…_ ”

He staggered back, his leg hitting the cushion of the pilot’s chair behind him, and stared up at the Doctor in disbelief. “ _So this was a test then, was it?_ ”

The Doctor flustered. “ _No_!”

“Doctor..?” 

The Master glanced over the Doctor’s shoulder and saw that Martha’s hand was hovering near her hip as she eyed them warily. The lights from the central column reflected off of the butt of a weapon under her jacket.

Deciding to ignore that for now, he returned his attention to the Doctor. “ _Really_?” he spat. “ _Because the only other reason I can think of is that you were just itching for the chance to sacrifice me so you can damn our homeworld again! But no… no, I think you were testing me. In your own way. To see how I stand up next to your moral high ground, because that’s all that matters, isn’t it? That the Doctor’s pets obey his rules._ ” His voice lowered to a dangerous growl. “ _No wonder you don’t want her to know what you were really up to. This all paints you in a rather selfish light, doesn’t it Doctor?_ ”

Desperately, the Doctor tried to redirect. _“The last thing the Ood said to me was ‘events that have happened are happening now.’ At first I thought it was another reference to Time converging, but I think they meant to say there would be multiple points of contact between this universe and Gallifrey beyond the Time Lock. You were there the first time Rassilon tried to bring Gallifrey back. You heard what he said about the Final Sanction. They’ll destroy everything. Please help me!_ ”

The Master clasped his hands in front of himself. “ _Well, I’m very sorry to inform you_ ,” he said, smiling placidly at the worried Doctor’s face, “ _but you’re asking for help about thirteen years too late. And as usual, you’re too deluded by your own idea of what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s good for the universe and what isn’t. You think you’re some pinnacle to be striven for, but you are not better than me. Don’t forget that I’ve known you longer than anyone. I know all your secrets and your sins._ ” The Master unfolded his hands, stepping purposefully into the Doctor’s space and jamming an accusing finger into his chest. “ _Good men don’t run, Doctor._ ”

Something cold flickered through the Doctor’s expression, and his mouth pressed into a thin line. He reached up slowly and took the Master’s hand, pushing it away from himself. “You say that as if you ever made it easy for me to stay.”

The Master reeled like he’d been slapped, barely containing a snarl as the Doctor seethed over him. He felt rage flaring uncontrolled and eager for release. His fingers dug into his palms, teeth gritted almost hard enough to crack. 

It rushed through him with a force that threatened to tear him in half, and he willed the damage in his body from the abortive resurrection to resurface so he could relieve the torrent with a blast of searing energy aimed square at the other Time Lord’s body. But sadly, that ability was gone. Just another way the Doctor had “helped” him by leaving him powerless.

Martha was still standing off to the side just over the Doctor’s shoulder, staring at them and deathly still, and suddenly the Master was incensed that she was present, watching the way she had the day he died on Earth with the Doctor sobbing over his body. Probably still full of pity for this pathetic excuse for a Time Lord, just like all the other ridiculous humans who idolized him. As if they had the right to pity the man. Or love him. Or hate him. Or worship the ground he walked on before putting him back in his place.

The Master kept his gaze trained on the Doctor when he jerked his chin in her direction. “ _Take her home. Now. You probably won’t want her to see what happens next._ ”

“ _Master. Please. I’m begging you. We don’t have time. If there’s any chance the drums could summon Gallifrey back, I need your help to stop them. This doesn’t need to be the—”_

Refusing to be swayed, he switched back to English. “You have five seconds, or I will pilot this piece of junk to Earth myself, tie you both down, and make her watch while I slice every member of the Jones family to pieces.”

It had the reaction he’d hoped for, and over the Doctor’s shoulder he saw Martha draw her weapon.

“One more time,” she said coldly, staring at him down the barrel. “Threaten my family _one more time_ , you son of a bitch.”

He leered at her, relieved that _someone_ was prepared to fight, while the Doctor spun around, arms extended, stepping between her and the Master.

“Martha, _don’t_.”

“Oh, come on, Doctor. Let her have some fun,” he chided, stepping around the other Time Lord so he could have an unobstructed view of the human. His eyes flashed hungrily. “Tell you what, Martha dear. If your mother learned to make a decent cup of tea since I saw her last, I’ll consider keeping her alive. Could be just like the good ol’ days on the Valiant.”

There was a part of him that knew he wouldn’t die before they reached the fixed point. But there was another part of him that didn’t care either way, since his premature death could trigger the paradox, unleashing deadly reapers into this world through the tear in reality. Truth be told, he didn’t know what to expect when she pulled the trigger, but it definitely wasn’t the feeling of a needle piercing the side of his neck, right over the persistent bruise from all the injections. His hand brushed over the tender skin until he felt hard plastic, and his mouth twitched with an incredulous huff. He yanked the sedative dart out and tossed it to the floor, staggering forward just as the Doctor whipped around to catch him by the shoulders.

“Non-lethal…” he said. “Cute.” The edges of his vision began to blur, and he struggled to keep his head from lolling forward so he could stare directly into the Doctor’s eyes as his body slumped into his grasp. “ _What was it… they told you_?” he slurred in High Gallifreyan, the sonorous query backed by the percussive beat of four still pulsing through the room as the Doctor lowered him to the floor. “ _Your song… your song is ending, Doctor._ ”

And everything went silent and dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was getting on 7K words, so I decided to break it up into two. Unclear if this will affect the total chapter count, so I'm just leaving it as is for the moment. The next half will be up pretty quickly.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Ten will regenerate between this chapter and the next time we see the Doctor.

When his eyes fluttered open some time later, he found himself surrounded by bright lights and white walls. Confused, he wondered why he was in the zero room before he felt the thin mattress of a bed supporting him and noticed the steady beeps of the heartsmonitor to his left. He glanced around the empty medical bay.

Folded neatly on a chair next to his bed was a new suit, presumably left for him by the Doctor. He looked down and realized with some embarrassment he was still wearing the same drab grey uniform he’d been given at the facility. He tore the leads for the monitor off his skin, turning off the machine before it alerted anyone, and started to reach for the change of clothes when he heard muffled yelling outside. He leaned further off the edge of the bed, listening.

“I want to know what he was saying to you!”

Martha’s voice. Demanding and angry.

“Martha, I said I’ll explain later.”

The Doctor’s voice. Pleading and tired.

“You did say that. On the asteroid. After he ditched us. And now, it _is_ later, and I want to know what the hell is going on. Two days ago, you said we were investigating a distress call, and suddenly it's like all hell has broken loose.” There was a pregnant pause while she waited for an answer. Receiving none, she lowered her voice so the Master struggled to hear and added, “He’s supposed to be the liar, not you.”

Another long silence followed, and he could picture the Doctor dithering over the accusation. Then the door slid open, and Martha marched into the room.

“Martha, stay away from him!”

But she didn’t break stride as she stormed up to the Master’s bedside, where he’d clumsily flopped back onto the mattress.

“Don’t you dare tell me what to do, Doctor.”

The Master blinked groggily at her, clearly unable to summon an intimidating enough scowl, since she didn’t stop until she was right next to him.

“Good,” she snapped. “You’re awake. Tell me what happened.”

His face twisted, flashing anger for only a moment before the pretence of indignation fell away, leaving a devious smile in its place. Where the Master had failed hurting the Doctor, maybe one of his favorite little humans would succeed.

He sat up slowly in the bed, crossing his legs under himself and leaning forward, all while Martha’s scowl went from confident to wary.

“I’m so glad you asked,” he said, and before she could pull away, he reached out with both hands to touch the sides of her face.

As expected, he’d recovered from the chemicals more quickly than the Doctor had and only felt a twinge behind his eyes as he forced his thoughts directly into Martha’s head.

Her mind, unused to that kind of telepathic assault, struggled to repel the sensational flood of the Master's memories: his realization that he was trapped; his short-lived relief at being rescued, replaced quickly by the confirmation of a suspicion he’d had for years: that the Doctor initiated the self-destruct, using it as a lure to maintain the integrity of the event loop. Next there was the Doctor’s explanation about the Ood prophecy, his fears that Gallifrey might still return, his pleading, all translated so Martha could understand. But beyond that, there was rage, pure and burning. Every emotion — be it fear, sadness, joy, devotion, or pity — had an undercurrent of wrath that stemmed from the core of him, propelled forward by the booming thunder of drums, overshadowing every experience.

And it terrified Martha. Out of curiosity, he traced the root of the fear, delighted when he found the source. The human recognized the conviction behind his anger, and she saw its reflection in the Doctor. She'd seen what he did to the Family, and she worried that a monster was still buried deep within him, its claws twitching at the possibility of release. He sensed her suspicions that the pair of Time Lords had been traveling together for too long, that the Doctor was changing for the worse.

Or rather, that a different facet of him was being turned toward the light, all at once ancient and new, polished and gleaming and deadly.

Then he felt his hands being forced away as the Doctor shoved himself in between them, the psychic connection snapping as soon as the physical one was lost, spilling that brutal hatred throughout the room like a split pipe spraying water.

The Doctor recoiled, and the noise of drumming rose throughout the ship once more. He started to ask her if she was hurt, but Martha was already shouting.

“You knew! You knew the whole time something dangerous was going on down there, and you didn’t tell me!” She rounded on the Doctor, latent anger from the telepathic link boiling off of her, forcing the Doctor back until he bumped the wall. “You unleashed a psychopath, brought him to… to some fixed point, or whatever, hoping that… what? He wouldn’t do anything bad? He wouldn’t hurt you? He wouldn’t hurt _me_?”

The Doctor held his hands up, mouth opening to retort, but Martha didn’t give him the chance. “You didn’t even think of that, did you? You didn’t even think about what could’ve happened to me. You _know_ what he did to my family. He _hunted_ me across Earth for a year, and I have to live with that alone because no one else remembers! No one. Not even you, apparently!”

Tears were streaming down her face now, and the Doctor tried to interject.

“Martha, I’m sorry, but I couldn’t risk the fixed point being affected. The consequences…”

“Oh, fuck the consequences!” she screamed, cutting him off again. “I am never going to forgive you for making me agree with _him_ , but he’s right: your moral absolutes only seem to matter when it’s convenient to you. You don’t get to decide what’s right and wrong and what bits of information needs parceling out. Not when it puts me in danger.” She threw up her hands in exasperation. “I mean, why did you even bring me along?”

The Doctor sighed. “I’ve spent too long running from this. I needed to make sure I… I mean, having you here, I know I wouldn’t be tempted…” He gave her a brief pleading look before he trailed off, looking down at where his feet shifted on the floor. “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you, but if you had known, he would’ve found out.”

Martha stared at him for a deafening moment before saying quietly, “You used me so you wouldn’t run away.”

The Master had been watching with barely contained glee, a chuckle starting quietly at first, quickly growing maniacal. If after all this time, it only took a _human_ to get the Doctor to understand what a hypocrite he was... It was as infuriating as it was hilarious as it was pathetic.

The Doctor deflated against the attack, unable to come up with anything he was remotely justified in saying to defend himself.

Martha ignored the Master, keeping her gaze trained on the Doctor. “What is the prophecy?” Her voice was like ice.

The Doctor opened his mouth as if he were going to speak, then snapped it shut, shaking his head slowly.

“Come… come _on,_ Doctor,” the Master said, gasping between fits of laughter. “No secrets among friends. I think the human can handle it.”

“It’s precisely _because_ she’s human that she wouldn’t understand,” the Doctor snapped at him.

“Careful Doctor, I think she can hear you,” the Master said with an exaggerated stage whisper, indicating the flustered companion.

Martha glared at both of them, but the Doctor was just shaking his head.

“No. Master, you were _there_ during the War. You saw the terrors of it. There was a reason you ran.”

The Master’s giggles stopped immediately, and he snarled at the other Time Lord. “I was never meant to be in that fucking war.”

“Sure. And I bet you only stuck around for as long as you did to take in the scenery. Bet it had nothing to do with enjoying all the brutality.”

“So I let myself unwind a little bit and did some good for my homeworld while I was at it. Hard not to let loose after being trapped in the Eye of Harmony. Thanks for that, by the way.”

The Doctor sputtered. “You’re going to blame me for that? Seriously?” He pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled sharply. “The point is, we’re the only two beings alive in this universe that could _possibly_ understand how dangerous Rassilon is.” His brown eyes bored into the Master, and he let out a bitter huff. “Yet, you were ready to welcome him into this universe with open arms as soon as you realized you didn’t stand a chance against him. Not that he would have you.”

The words hit like an ice pick, burying deep enough in his chest that he couldn’t help but wince. Unsure if his voice would betray him, the Master remained silent.

Martha’s gaze swung over to where the other Time Lord sat up in bed, fuming murderously, and she watched him for a moment before she turned back to the Doctor, her voice going low and cold. “I want you to take me home. Now.” She leaned in, shoving her finger in the Doctor’s chest. “And if you ever bother coming back to Earth again, it’d better be without him.”

* * *

The Master waited until Martha was gone and the TARDIS had left Earth before changing into the suit the Doctor had left him: a slim, charcoal number similar to what he’d been wearing before he was captured. He approached the night stand next to the second bed, eyeing the third drawer down.

All of his movements felt like they were guided on rails, as the influence of the fixed point loomed ever closer. His senses were attuned to it, little sparks and twinges in his muscles urging him along, like some kind of autopilot. He looked at his face in the reflection of the dark displays screens lining the wall of the medical bay, mouth twisted in a bitter smile as his hand reached up to touch the scruffy beard that had grown in, his shaggy, pale hair, the dark bags under his eyes, sunk deep in his puffy cheeks. His legs moved on their own accord down the corridor as he tightened the vortex manipulator to his wrist as he went. He patted his pocket to make sure the syringe was tucked away safely, ghosting his fingers over the laser weapon at his side.

He considered leaving now, tearing away the threads of time woven through him, leaving a fatal rip in reality. But this was just… so much easier. A decision made for him, something he could do without a thought, without moral scruples (if he had any to begin with). This must be why the Doctor kept him around: the relief at being able to un-shoulder the burden of the universe and hoist it on someone else.

The Doctor was braced against the control panel when he found him in the console room. Telepathic abilities recovered, the Master was hardly surprised when he sensed the isomorphic locks had been reengaged. He should’ve felt indignation at that, but disappointment was the only thing rising up in him now, sad and slow.

He’d felt this before. They both had. Every time they’d come together under the condition of a fragile truce, they always knew it would never last. Like all the great adventure stories tucked away in the Doctor’s grand library, the ending was inevitable.

“Aren’t you tired of this, Doctor?”

The other Time Lord’s fingers curled into fists where he leaned against the controls, but he didn’t look up. He didn’t speak.

He’d made his choice.

The Master looked down at the floor, absently fingering the trigger of the gun tucked into his suit. “Because I’m tired of it. What is it they say about the definition of insanity?”

The Doctor did turn his attention to the Master at that. “This doesn’t have to be the end, though. We don’t have to repeat” — he gestured around vaguely — “ _this_ again. Once the prophecy…” His voice caught, and his eyes flicked away for a moment while he cleared his throat. “Once we’re past the fixed point, we can still travel. There’s still so much to see. So much I want to show you. Bringing Martha along was a mistake. _Lying_ to you was a mistake.” He swiped his sleeve over his eyes, wiping away tears. “But I meant it when I asked how long you wanted to stay. I _want_ you here with me, by my side.”

Ah, there it was. The Master had been hoping he wouldn’t have to be the one to bring up the question the Doctor had asked all that time ago in the ocean room.

_How long do you want to stay_?

No, asking about that would be tantamount to handing the gun over to the Doctor and painting bullseyes over his hearts. And by all intents, the Doctor looked as if he believed what he was saying. But while it had been over a decade prior in the Master’s timeline, it’d only been a day in the Doctor’s, and as was customary, the Doctor had asked him a question without intending to hear the Master’s answer.

And here they were, the enmity of ages, drawing close as ever again as the potential for collision thrummed around them in a beat of four.

The Doctor’s eyes were still swimming as he looked pleadingly at the Master, who hovered at the mouth of the room.

The Master gave him a half smile. “I always wondered why they said I was the crazy one.”

The remaining bit of hope in the Doctor’s face fell away. His shoulders slumped in defeat.

“No, Doctor, I don’t think that will do. I can think of better uses for my time than playing sidekick to a sanctimonious, lying child like yourself. This universe is our birthright.” He took a step forward, finger still tracing the line of the gun. “And I intend to claim it.”

He took another step, the movements happening unconsciously as his mind trained on the fixed point. They were gripped in it now. He could feel it in his chest, in his steady heartsbeat. He tapped the rhythm of four against the handrail as he passed, feeling the echo of the beat respond through the vibrating metal as the signal continued to pulse through the TARDIS systems.

He pulled the gun out of his pocket, and watched the color drain from the Doctor’s face. There wasn’t much satisfaction in it, sadly.

“Have you sent the self-destruct command and the instructions for disabling it yet?”

The Doctor gave a stiff nod.

The Master watched him for a moment, then tipped his head toward the weapon. “This is powerful enough to ensure you regenerate. Not right away, but you will. Gives you enough time to say goodbye to this body, and any friends you might still have left.” He met the Doctor’s gaze again. “I wouldn’t dawdle. The drums won’t be purged from your ship until you change and I’m gone. But after that, you should be safe from our dear Lord President.”

The Doctor straightened his shoulders, his voice oddly steady, anger simmering below the surface. “And you? Where will you go?”

The Master ran his palm over the smooth metal of the barrel and tipped his head to the side, not bothering to conceal his crooked smile. “Thought I might pay Gallifrey a visit.”

The Doctor blanched. “But that’s impossible!”

The Master held up his other arm, shaking his sleeve down just enough that the vortex manipulator was visible.

“Master… No, you can't!”

“Oh, I can. And I will. And don’t bother searching your coordinate logs. I made sure to wipe them.”

“You’d leave me for _them_? After what they did to you?”

“Hah! That’s rich coming from you.” He lowered his arm, hiding the vortex manipulator away again, and chuckled. “But don’t worry. I have no intention of helping the Time Lords return to this universe. I just want them to fix whatever they did to my head. You know, since they won’t _have_ me otherwise.” He took another step, now directly in front of the Doctor, and aimed the laser gun at his chest. “Let’s tie up this prophecy with a nice little bow so I can be on my way.”

The Doctor dragged a shaky breath into his lungs, his composure finally starting to crack. His lips were barely parted on the exhale, but as his chest and shoulders fell, the Master saw the lower one tremble. Tears clung to his lashes, threatening to spill over. He shook his head, an almost imperceptible plea, and the Master remembered the moment on Earth when he was sure the Doctor was going to kill him.

He tightened his grip on the gun.

“Can you just… please…” The Doctor’s throat bobbed to swallow down a harsh sob, and he tilted his head back to compose himself again. “Please, just tell me what you would’ve done instead. If you had to choose between me and the universe. Between me and _literally_ everything.” His voice was desperate, eyes pleading. “What would you have done?”

The Master tossed him a wry, bitter smile. “That’s just it, Doctor. It’s never been a choice.” He felt tears prickle at the corners of his own eyes as he took a steadying breath. “You always were everything.”

He fired.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trying to wrap up Simm!Master's arc soon so this doesn't end up being way more than 12 chapters 😅

Bill eyed the messy baker’s rack, scanning the disarray for dinner options. “Let’s see, there’s bread… beans, and... Oh! Beets!” She picked up the grimey can, coughing in response to the cloud of dust that poofed off of it. “Jeeze, mate, how long have these been sitting here? We should probably crack into this before it goes bad.”

Razor groaned. “How many times do I tell you? No beets. I hate beets.”

There was a clang when Bill dropped the can back down in its spot on the wire shelf. “You’ve never told me that,” she said as she stepped back in front of the settee, frowning good-naturedly. She was wearing a bulky cable knit tunic, and the red lights on her chest unit glowed steadily through the threadbare patches. Oddly enough, she blended right in with the piles of half-disassembled electronics that blinked like Christmas decorations throughout Razor’s cluttered room. “In fact, it’s been almost eight months I’ve been stuck in this hospital, and I don’t know anything about you.”

Razor, who had been staring at the small TV propped up in the corner, slid his eyes over to her without turning his head. “But you are my dearest friend, yes?”

Her face fell. “Well. I...uh...I didn’t mean… Sorry.” She trailed off awkwardly and plopped down in the vacant space next to him, tucking her legs under herself.

They went back to watching the grainy, still image of the Doctor on the screen for a few moments. The man’s eyebrows had been slowly climbing over the course of the last week, to the point where Razor figured it’d only be another 48 hours before they separated from his face entirely and floated away.

This was how they'd spent pretty much every evening since that first time they’d met. Well, since the first time Bill met _him_. The first time he met _Bill_ , she’d been unconscious in the post-op ward, reeking of the Doctor’s psychic signature, and he’d barely grazed her temple before he was bludgeoned with the message galvanizing her subconscious.

 _Wait for me_.

He’d recoiled instantly, the ease of reading her thoughts not worth the pang of resentment needling his brain. No matter, though. There were plenty of other ways to get information out of her.

Adjusting herself on the lumpy cushion, Bill sighed. “Look, the Doctor’s eyebrows aren’t going anywhere for a bit. How about I cook dinner tonight, and we can have a chat. Yeah?”

He raised an eyebrow. “No beets?”

Bill smiled. “No beets.”

* * *

“So how did you end up working at the hospital as an orderly?”

Razor swallowed a sip of tea, grimacing at the silty texture. It was like everything on this ship was coated in grit.

He eyed where she sat across from him, slowly chewing her reheated beans with one elbow perched on the rickety folding table, which still wobbled no matter how many squares of cardboard they jammed under the feet.

“It all started a long, long time ago,” he began, hiding a pleased smirk when she leaned in, eyes bright with curiosity.

The Doctor really knew how to pick ‘em.

He set his tin mug to the side, steepled his fingers under his chin, and continued. “I had just returned home after a long time away.”

* * *

_“We can block the psychic signal from this point in time on, but we can’t remove the drums from your past self. They were transmitted through the Time Vortex. The origin of the signal is irretrievable.”_

_The Master glanced around the room for the hundredth time, still not entirely convinced that he was back home. He’d felt that way — like he was stepping through a dream — since he laid eyes on the Citadel, gleaming and glorious under the suns of a new galaxy in a new universe. But even though it had been plucked out of time and hidden away, everything seemed exactly as it had been before the War: the warm red dirt, the smell of the air, the pressing weight of millions of telepathic minds buffeting against his own, dulling the banging four-beat din in his head._

_It would seem the Doctor had spent quite a bit of time feeling guilty about a genocide he didn’t actually commit._

_He chuckled and returned his attention to the other Time Lord. “Shouldn’t be a problem,” the Master said with a baleful grin, pressing the barrel of the laser pistol harder into the man’s temple. “Do it.”_

* * *

“Wait, wait, wait,” Bill said, slamming her mop back into the bucket at her feet. “You were going home to see a _Time Lord_?”

“Who else would be on Gallifrey?” he asked with a snort. “Sontarans?”

“Let me get this straight. Your home planet” — Bill leaned in as she spoke, lowering her voice to an urgent whisper — “is _Gallifrey?_ Does that make _you_ a Time Lord?!”

Artificial sunlight streamed in through the window next to Razor, who was leaning against the exposed brick ledge. The hallway was empty except for the two of them, the damp floors freshly cleaned and gleaming under the yellow lights that pooled beneath the wall sconces. He’d taken her outside of the hospital the evening before, hoping to finally convince her it wasn’t safe to leave. Sure enough, her chest unit faltered when they got out of range, and he had to half-carry her back to their room, trailing enough dust and dirt in with them that the nurse dragged them out to their shift an hour earlier than normal. It’d only be a matter of time before the grime settled back over the tiles, with Bill being forced to mop it up again.

To answer her question, Razor simply nodded.

“But that’s where my friend is from! He’s a Time Lord too!” Her eyes flashed with excitement, words crashing together as she rapid-fired more questions. “You’re not pulling my leg, then? You’re a real Time Lord? Why did you never say anything? You let me go on thinking you were human for the last two years!” She gasped. “Oh my god, do you _know the Doctor?”_

He held his palms out to shush her. “My friend, please, your voice. Keep it down. If they find out, well…”

Bill’s face twisted with concern. “You think they’d hurt you?”

Razor shrugged.

“Don’t worry, mate.” She held out her hand, three fingers pointed up. “I won’t tell a soul. Scout’s honor.”

A thin smile tugged at the corners of his lips. “I know you won’t. Now, can I finish my story?”

* * *

_His head was almost painfully clear, and he winced against the backdrop of newfound, overwhelming silence._

_“That’ll take some getting used to,” he gritted, waiting for his ship to dematerialize. It was time to get the hell out of there before the High Council realized he’d stolen a ship from one of the military hangars in the Citadel._

_Or “borrowed,” as the Doctor would’ve—_

_He stilled, body tensing. The image of the man’s wounded body collapsing on the TARDIS flight deck flashed across his vision, and the Master felt his throat constrict. He grimaced, forcing his eyes closed and fisting his hands. Two deep breaths, and he shook himself out of it._

_No point dwelling on the past._

_As if in agreement, the cloister bells began to sound, and the Master’s head snapped up at attention. He ran his hands over a glowing touch screen, simultaneously delighted at the modern controls and annoyed at the mystery danger on the radar. Symbols were projected across the interface, and he dragged them around with his hands, rearranging them until a holographic display appeared overhead._

_There was another ship in pursuit, the Time Lords apparently attempting to hone in on his escape route. Fortunately, they hadn’t gotten a lock on his temporal coordinates yet._

_He eyed the randomizer controls. As much as his instincts were screaming at him that this would end badly, he knew that randomizing his waypoint was the fastest way to exit the Vortex, with the highest probability of leaving the other TARDIS in the metaphorical dust without a trail to follow._

_He also knew it was something the Doctor would do without a second thought._

* * *

“So this ‘High Council’, or whatever, was so excited to see you again, they gave you a _TARDIS_?”

They were back in their shared room, taking a break between shifts.

“Yes,” he said proudly. “You see, I was very famous back home. Very much loved.”

She’d slammed her palms down on her knees, and Razor pretended to jolt in surprise, leaning back over the armrest of the settee. “You’re telling me you have a TARDIS? Here? On the colony ship?!”

“Of course! How did you get here?”

“Erh…” Bill paused. “...A TARDIS," she admitted finally. "But it's the Doctor’s, not—”

“See!” Razor interrupted, waving his hand around dismissively. “Very common mode of transport.”

On the television, the Doctor was in the slow process of uncapping a magic marker, which, for some god awful reason, was built into his sonic screwdriver.

Bill dragged a hand down her face and peered at him incredulously from between her fingers. Then she took a centering breath and folded her hands on her lap. “Is it somewhere in the hospital? Can we use it to escape?”

“No, I already told you. Too close to the black hole. The dematerialization circuit is badly damaged.”

Bill stared at him blankly.

“Ship. Is. Broken,” the Razor said slowly.

Bill continued to stare, then said in a small voice, “You’ve never told me that before.”

Razor arched a brow. “My mistake,” he conceded.

She chewed her lip, thinking, and Razor turned back to the TV. Seriously, the magic marker probably took up about twenty percent of the space in the sonic. Why not just carry a separate magic marker and use that extra real estate for something useful? Like a laser weapon.

“Maybe I could help you fix it!”

This time when he smiled, it was half-genuine. With every other human on floor 1056 slouching through the grey streets in stricken, huddled masses, Bill shone through like a ray of blazing sunshine. Hope bloomed up from her heart, flooding her face, illuminating her smile, and he knew exactly why the Doctor had chosen her.

“I appreciate the initiative,” Razor said, and Bill’s smile widened. “The naiveté? Not so much.”

She huffed and scowled at him, folding her arms over her chest unit. “You know, sometimes you sound like _her._ ”

“Who?” Razor pointed at the screen. “Scary Poppins?”

Bill barked out a laugh, that indefatigable good mood returning instantly. “Oh, that is _good_. Why did I never think of that?” Her laughter slowed to the occasional chuckle, before she fixed her gaze on him, face suddenly serious. “Did you ever meet them? The Doctor and Missy?”

“I knew them at school. Many, many, many centuries ago.”

Her mouth parted in surprise. “What was he like back then? The Doctor, I mean.”

Razor shrugged and rubbed the back of his neck where the mask itched against his skin. “Impulsive. Egotistical. Rebellious.”

Bill arched her back, making the furniture creak as she stretched her arms up and legs out until her socked toes pointed over the lip of the rug. Then she she folded back into herself, crossing her arms and settled in for the story, perfectly content. “Sounds about right.”

She stifled a yawn. It was getting late.

“What about Missy? What was she… er, what was _he_ like back then?”

“The same. Like peas in a pod.”

Bill snorted. “That’s what the Doctor told me. Hard to imagine, if I’m being perfectly honest.”

“It’s true. They started just like this” — Razor touched his index fingers together — “but after a while...” He moved his hands apart, fingertips making a “V” through the air as they separated. He added a few explosion noises for effect.

“What happened?”

Razor shrugged. “The Doctor fled Gallifrey and left him behind. They’ve been fighting ever since.”

“Not now though,” Bill said, perking up a bit. “I mean, Missy is still crazy scary, but the two of them actually get along.”

He gave her a sad laugh and shook his head. “When they’re working together, it’s worse than when they’re fighting.”

* * *

_The TARDIS slammed back into the Master’s original universe so violently, he thought they’d collided with something._

_The ship blared alerts about the nearby black hole, and he panicked, engaging the dematerializer before he checked the readouts on the screen. He was way too close to the event horizon._

_“Come on, come on. Let’s go!” he shouted, and routed more power to the controls._

_The rotor pumped twice and a shower of sparks erupted from the central column. He was plunged into darkness._

_“Shitshitshit,” he hissed as the TARDIS rebooted. A display illuminated the space before him, indicating the critical failure in the dematerialization circuit._

_The ship brought the rest of its systems back online as quickly and as quietly as it could, while the Master dusted off choice swear words from several dozen lesser known languages and cursed every square inch of the Doctor’s personage, his entire family, and all of his friends._

_“Well,” he said, expelling a huff of air when he’d finally settled down after a few minutes of impressive linguistic gymnastics, “at least they can’t follow me here.” He eyed the scanners. It appeared he’d landed on a colony ship. Not wanting to be found out as an unintentional stowaway, he thought it best to just find whoever was in charge and hypnotize them immediately._

_He barreled out of the doors, all fire and fury, and was greeted by a huddled group of humans from Mondas. They’d barely gotten through explaining what they were doing there when he bolted into one of the nearest buildings, wheeling around desperately to read the time display mounted above the door: Floor 1056. Day 000255461. 10 hours, 18 minutes, 5 seconds and counting._

_“Fuck.”_

* * *

“No way!” Bill laughed. “I woke up on day 365,036! That would mean—”

“I’ve been here for over 300 years,” Razor said, nodding calmly.

Bill gaped at him, waiting for the punchline. When he remained silent, he noticed the subtle transition from astonishment to horror in her expression, only the barest sheen of tears misting over her eyes. “I-I can’t imagine,” she breathed. “Makes my six and a half years seem like nothing.”

Razor nodded more vigorously at that. “Yes, see? I tell you not to complain, because it could always be worse. Much, much worse.”

And didn’t he know it. 300 years was far longer than his previous imprisonment, but the colony ship had turned out to be much nicer than that miserable facility. No daily torture, for one. Unless you counted the tea.

He grinned at her, and she ducked her head to look back down at the puzzle she’d been assembling on the floor. After a moment’s pause, she pepped back up.

“So Time Lords live a really long time, then?”

“Are you calling me old?”

“Nope! You look” — she forced a smile — “ _really_ great for your age. Really. Yep.”

“You’re a good friend,” he said happily. “You always tell me exactly what I want to hear.”

Her smile twinged, and she looked back down at the strewn about puzzle pieces. Despite Razor having spent the last few days hiding all the edge pieces under various seat cushions, the image of rolling hills and a pastel sky were coming together. Bill frowned at the jagged hole right in the middle of the sunset.

“Have you seen any orange pieces sitting around? I swear the box is missing some.”

Razor just smiled and shook his head.

* * *

_“You came on a rescue capsule?”_

_The Master nodded at the group of humans sitting around him at the table. “Yes, but unfortunately it was damaged by the proximity to the black hole.”_

_The humans groaned miserably._

_“And I hate to break it to you,” he continued, “but that’s not even the worst news I have. You see, my ship was able to pick up life signs on floor 507. I believe you said it was some sort of solar farm?”_

_“Yes!” The human sitting directly across from him nodded vigorously. “Just like we told you. Decades ago, our grandparents and great-grandparents still hadn’t heard anything from the flight deck. A small group traveled to the solar farms, hoping to at least scavenge for supplies. They never came back. We haven’t had contact with anyone elsewhere on the ship.” The man paused, and eyed him warily. “What did you find?”_

_“It was a slaughter,” the Master lied. “I don’t know who perpetrated it, but someone or something must have invaded the upper levels of the ship.”_

_Low murmuring filled the room, the humans looking anxiously at each other._

_“Listen,” he snapped, commanding their attention. “You’re at the lowest level, furthest from the black hole. Time is moving fastest here, which means you have plenty of time to prepare.”_

_“Prepare for what?” another human asked._

_“Taking back this ship,” he said, one hand stroking his goatee. “And I can help.”_

_Naturally, after that, the pollution worsened, food and medical supplies dwindled, morale dropped, the average lifespan nearly halved. There was a revolt, and the Master hid himself away to watch the chaos unfold, gleeful at the fact that his central motto still grounded the humans: we must be strong, we must evolve._

_He always liked the saying "kill two birds with one stone." It implied both efficiency and murder, two things he could really get behind. He knew if he wanted to escape the ship, he'd have better luck doing it with an army of Mondasian Cybermen than a bunch of humans. And if that meant the brutal end of this little colony of the Doctor's favorite species, well. He wasn't above holding a grudge._

* * *

“When the Doctor gets here, he’ll save us, and I’m sure he can help you fix your TARDIS. Maybe you can even travel with us for a bit.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Razor said. “His girlfriend probably wouldn’t be too happy about that.”

Bill snorted. “You mean Missy? She’s not his girlfriend, mate.”

“Ah, I must have misread the signals.”

“What signals?”

"The signals," he insisted, gesturing toward the TV. The screen had been stuck on the same image for nearly a month: the Doctor and Missy glaring at each other from opposite sides of the room. “The sexual tension. You could cut like with a knife.”

Bill choked on her tea. “Oh god, I do _not_ need that image in my mind.”

“Humans, you are so strange,” Razor laughed. “Two Time Lords, traveling together. Perfectly natural.” He waggled his eyebrows.

“Hate to break it to you, but you’ve got the wrong idea. Trust me, they are _just_ friends.” She huffed a laugh and shook her head. “If you can even call it that. She’s sort of like his prisoner.”

Well, that was new.

“What do you mean?” Razor asked, leaning forward ever so slightly.

“He was sworn to guard her for a thousand years. Keep her out of trouble, I guess. She’s really not even supposed to be out of the vault. I mean, she’s absolutely bonkers.” A shiver ran through her. “Scares the hell out of me. The way she talks about killing like it’s a game.” Her fingers tapped anxiously against her mug.

“Vault?” He realized too late that he said it without Razor’s thick accent, and he coughed to cover it up, but Bill didn’t seem to notice.

“Yeah, it’s where he keeps her most of the time. Although I think she can leave whenever she wants. Kind of defeats the purpose of being a prisoner. I mean, right now, she’s only out because the Doctor wanted to test her.” She swirled her tea, looking morose. “Before we went on the adventure, the Doctor told me that Missy was the one person in the universe remotely like him, and I think he had it in his head that if he could prove she was good, he’d be able to convince himself he was good too."

She was to focused on the sloshing in her mug to realize that Razor was whiteknuckling the fork he held in his hand. With supreme care, he set the utensil down next to his plate of untouched stir-fry. If he didn’t start eating it soon, he knew Bill would get distracted and start fretting over him, but he didn’t trust himself to open his mouth. Eventually, she cleared her throat, her smile returning and sunshine pouring out of her eyes.

"I'm sure they won't mind if you come along. I'll ask the Doctor myself! It’s the least I can do after everything you’ve done for me.” She beamed at him, grin fit to light up the room. “You’ve been a good friend. Really. I’ll never forget it.” She turned back toward the TV, her hopeful gaze trained on the Doctor.

“Oh, my dear,” he said quietly, reaching out before she had a chance to turn back to him. His fingers made contact with her temples and she slumped forward in her seat. “I’m afraid you always do.”

* * *

Wait for me _._

_The psychic signal blasted through the ship with a jarring amount of force that the Master flew awake, nearly falling out of his cot._

_“Doctor?” he mumbled blearily, shoving away the tangle of coarse blankets and climbing out of bed. He immediately tripped over the carcass of a dissected radio he’d left in the middle of the floor, swearing as he grabbed his stubbed toe._

_He hated this mess he was living in, but he’d gotten sick of hypnotizing the floor nurse day after day and decided to just look the part of “withered, oddball orderly waiting to be converted.” The facade allowed him to keep a close eye surgeon’s progress in the conversion theater._

_He dug through a pile of schematics, uncovering a small TV sitting on the floor underneath. The nurse wouldn’t be doing her rounds for another few hours, giving him plenty of time to hook the TV directly into the colony ship’s security feed. By the time the artificial sunlight, muted through the haze of factory smoke, began to creep through the covered windows of his dwelling, he’d finished his little project._

_Dumbfounded, he sat staring at the flickering image of the Doctor standing by the lift doors on floor zero. By the time he’d reached out telepathically, the Doctor had shielded his mind again. His two new companions were equally locked down._

_He knew the message wasn’t meant for him, but who, then?_

_His eyes roved over the picture again: the Doctor was facing the camera, his body turned away from the lift, but his palm was still pressed flat against the doors._

Wait for me.

_“You fucker,” he muttered. He pulled his mask over his face and took off toward the operation theater._

* * *

_“He told me to wait for him,” Bill had said the first night they sat on his settee, staring at that same still image. “He’s going to save me. I know it. He wouldn’t leave me here.”_

_The Master ground his teeth, fist clenched so tight around the handle of his tea mug that it shook in his grip. “He must care about you,” he said, keeping his voice calm and even despite the growing rage. “What a good friend.”_

* * *

Bill snored once loudly before coming to.

“Hmm? Oh… Sorry,” she mumbled, rubbing the heels of her hands into her eyes. “Must’ve dozed off.” She stretched and leaned back on the settee, turning to look at Razor. “You hungry? I think I saw an old can of beets back there. I could try to make something with that.”

Razor groaned. “Always with the beets. You know I hate beets.”

Bill chuckled. “I’ve been your flatmate for ten years, and you have never _once_ told me you hate beets.”

Razor eyed her sideways, then dipped his head in concession. “My mistake. Must have forgotten.”

* * *

By the following morning, he’d reworked his plan. Originally, he figured he’d hold Bill hostage and use her to negotiate safe passage aboard the Doctor’s TARDIS. But the Doctor had yammered away long enough on floor zero that Operation Exodus was nearing completion, and it seemed like an unnecessary waste to abandon an entire fleet of Mondasian Cybermen.

The Doctor and Missy — as if _the Master_ wasn’t a good enough name anymore — were on their way down, but even with the high speed inertia lifts, they wouldn’t get to floor 1056 until the following evening. Plenty of time to—

“Do you think they're coming down here?”

Bill had just woken up and was standing in front of the TV. “Because if they are, where does that lift arrive?” Her lips quirked in a small smile. “Just asking.”

When Razor promised to tell her, Bill hugged him so tight that her chest unit pressed bruises into his ribs. The dull ache was still there when he left the conversion theater to the sounds of her screaming. A harsh lesson, no doubt, but at some point people needed to stop waiting around for the Doctor to save them.

And if he had just sabotaged his future self’s plans to… what? Travel happily ever after with the Doctor? Pretend to be a do-gooder? Well…

Two birds. One stone.

After all he’d gone through to make sure he never had to deal with the Doctor’s bullshit again, he wasn’t about to let one rebellious, future regeneration ruin it for him. His boots trailed prints through the dust of the abandoned hospital ward, and he made his way toward the lifts without looking back.


End file.
